On Victory and the Spoils
by thinkatory
Summary: AU from Avengers: while on the run from Loki, the Avengers discover Bucky under the ice. Second in a series that starts with Jumping, Falling, and Topics of Similar Gravity, which I recommend reading first. Steve/Bucky, Bucky/Tony, Bucky/Tony/Pepper.
1. Chapter 1

A prequel/sequel to Jumping, Falling, and Topics of Similar Gravity. I recommend you read that first. This chapter is mostly canon-compliant but the story will veer pretty far off soon. Steve/Bucky, Bucky/Tony, Bucky/Tony/Pepper.

* * *

So, well, it's been a weird day.

Earlier, Bucky Barnes's scrawny best friend Steve Rogers appeared out of nowhere looking like a star-spangled bodybuilder, and went all pulp fiction hero to save everyone's asses from a mad science Nazi base hundreds of miles behind enemy lines. Bucky has never been more grateful, to God or Steve or anyone else at all, to get out of there alive with his best friend and brothers-in-arms, especially after he sees a completely insane guy peel his face off and rant at Steve while the Hydra compound exploded around them.

Once they're back in camp, the medics do their triage and clean everyone up, the shock starts to wear off, and the reality sinks in - yeah, this is all real, what the hell, reality? Something is clanging around in Bucky's head as he lies down to recuperate. When he closes his eyes, it gets worse. Something weird and intense is rattling his brain like bats in his belfry, and he starts to wonder if maybe he's losing it. Or this rescue thing could all be a dream, actually, and he's still strapped down feeling like there's lead pumping through his veins in the rare moments when he's actually awake and not deliriously stuck halfway in memories of playing jacks with Flossie or having a staring contest with Millie or teaching Bobby a good boxer's stance, and Steve, fuck, he'll never see Steve again. _This is all some fucked up hallucination_ and one blink will bring the Hydra facility back again, the gray, the dark.

On the other hand, it's a really detailed and consistent hallucination, not to mention that he's not sure he would ever even subconsciously turn Steve into a super-muscled hero out of the Boy's Adventure-type books no matter what someone injected into his bloodstream. It's disconcerting enough an idea in reality, he really doesn't want to consider why his brain would voluntarily present him with a Steve taller and more impressive than him just to pettily make him feel worse about being captured and experimented on.

"Bucky," Steve says, then, and he hesitates before opening his eyes. There Steve is; there's his stupid keen and worried and well-meaning face pasted on Captain America's body. ( _Captain America_? Really?) "You got a clean bill of health?"

"Basically." Bucky sits up, then meets his gaze, and it's too real to deny, even with all the endless gibberish parading through his brain. That's his best friend. "They say I have a concussion. I know what a concussion feels like - mostly thanks to you - this isn't one." He doesn't want to talk about this. He doesn't want to _think_ about this. "Those Hydra bastards - "

"Don't think about it. Not too much, not now. Just - rest." Steve stands cautiously there for a second, looking just like one of the still-lifes in the sketchbook under his arm, then when Bucky raises his eyebrows, he finally sits down beside him.

It's awkward. Really awkward, for reasons Bucky can't begin to think even in the safety in his own head. "So are you stashing a red skull under there, or you have any of the pretty nurses around here check?" he asks after a long moment.

Steve laughs, then he grins. "Can't say I have. But I brought something to show you," he says, and opens the sketchbook, flipping to a specific page. It knocks the wind out of Bucky in the best possible way before it registers exactly what he's looking at. There they are, the five of them, running around under an open fire hydrant like they're all a bunch of kids, with two of Bucky's favorite girls in there for good measure.

Like that, the volume of the rat-a-tat of endless evil Nazi drumming in his head starts to drop.

"Thanks," he says to Steve, and touches the sketch. He doesn't have to look at Steve to know the smile he wears. It's not a memory, strictly speaking, not something either of them could put a date or time on, but just the idea is an anchor to who they really are. And it's one of the first times he's felt like _Bucky, actual Bucky_ , not just Sergeant Barnes, since he was shipped overseas.

* * *

Peggy Carter is a vision draped in red, like something out of the movies, and Bucky can't keep his eyes off her even before she talks to Steve, all crisp and flirtatious. He knows he doesn't stand a chance with her just by her expression, how it's just the two of them and the extras once she enters. But a man's got to try, otherwise what's the point?

It's a little discouraging, being ignored that way. The way Steve glosses past everything this means, what's happened in the months between Bucky leaving New York and the escape from the Hydra facility, how much his life has changed, is worse, especially because what it says about how shallow and jealous Bucky's become even while facing true, insane evil.

(It's still not even a question when Steve asks. He's in. Wherever Steve goes, he goes.)

Anyway, Bucky decides to get really, really fucking drunk, or he tries. He leans on Steve, who props him up on his still weirdly bulky shoulder, telling dumb jokes as he hauls Bucky to camp. Bucky laughs at his old favorites - ducks saying "put it on my bill" will never not be funny - and tugs on Steve's shoulder. "Hey," he says, in what is probably not a whisper, but is the best he can manage. "I'm glad you got yourself a girl."

"Haven't really got her yet," Steve says wryly. "But I can try."

"You can do it. You're the best guy I've ever known. She's got to see that. Especially now that you're..." Bucky gestures, up and down, and raises his eyebrows.

Steve nods, and cracks a wary smile. "It's fine, Buck, I just… I can't think about that now."

"We're at war," he says, curling his fingers into Steve's uniform. "People are trying to kill us and we might be good at our jobs and harder to kill but we could still die. So we have to enjoy what we can."

"It sounds like you're giving me the 'could be my last night on Earth' speech the sailors pull on the docks, and don't we usually punch the guys who try that one on Millie?"

"Steve," Bucky presses. "She's no Millie. And you're not just a soldier. None of us are. You can take a break."

"I take breaks - "

"She's a modern girl. Look at her, she's in the forces. Just - " He's not even sure why he's so desperate at this point. "Why not go for it?"

The answer is clear on his face - the same answer as ever, the same insecurity and fears and stupid shit that really doesn't count into it now - but Steve says nothing aloud. "If it happens, it happens," is all he says. "You jealous?"

"More than I'd ever admit sober," Bucky says, and grins when Steve gives him a helpful push towards the barracks, laughing.

* * *

Things are shifting in his head. None of it is simple, or explicable, or anything normal. None of it is anything he can really say out loud. Bucky has never been a guy who talked about things overmuch with anyone except Steve, maybe. And yeah, Steve's right there but Steve's also different and not exactly Steve and sometimes the weird new instincts in his head go off like klaxons saying _none of this could be real_ and he should wake up, wake up, wake up.

But it's more complicated than that. He knows that, but not much more than that.

Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips (who Bucky likes more than he'll ever admit) are due to show up at 0900 tomorrow, and the Commandos have spent all night celebrating the capture of a Hydra map. They're heading back to camp, Bucky's drunk and making the usual innuendo at a jokingly unimpressed Steve, and it's like someone's just raised the anchor keeping him from tilting, upending, and crashing into the sea. Steve laughs, makes a deadpan joke that Bucky doesn't quite hear, and pulls him away from the nearby woods as he stumbles. Bucky pushes him away playfully once they're closer to the woods where they've made camp. He shakes his head and goes to reach for the grounding bark of a tree, makes contact hard with a branch, and leans heavily against the trunk.

It's like words are pressing into the back of his head. He can feel them, looming, somehow. _Something's happening._

It's more than just her.

"Buck," Steve says, and it's firmer than the casual verbal nudge he wants it to be, and his eyes open to meet Steve's. "You aren't that drunk."

Bucky shakes his head again. "No," he confirms. "I just want to…" _Be here. With you._ No. _Not go back there. Not now._ "We're gonna win this, right, Captain?"

Steve smiles, self-deprecating as he always is when Bucky brings rank into it, and says, "Yeah. I've got a plan. Come on." He tugs at his shoulder. "This way."

He doesn't budge an inch. "I don't get it," he says. "You're superhuman. You're in newsreels and everyone likes you, and there's a pretty girl who wants to 'snog' your face off, whatever, but _all_ you do is work. I know you, Steve. You don't have anything to prove now, what's going on?"

"Why are you headshrinking me?" Steve asks, delicate but with a sharp edge. "You've been a little off lately yourself."

The fluttering feeling in his head has escaped into his chest. "You're not in this alone."

Steve's starting to look aggravated despite himself. "I know that," he retorts. "Can we please just go?"

"Don't," Bucky hears himself say, then presses his forehead into the bark of the tree branch, sighing as Steve goes still. "No. Just listen." There's silence, but Steve doesn't go, as much as he couldn't blame him for just leaving out of annoyance. (He's even annoyed at himself right now, but he's confused in so many ways.) "Stopping bullies and fighting evil isn't all you are. You know that."

"So all I'm missing is the part with the girls?" Steve asks, dryly, but still cautious.

"Kind of." The pressure in his head is lifting, some. "Don't let the Hydra bastards take anything from you, for any reason. Have fun when you can get it, promise me?"

"I'm having fun when you're not getting all philosophical on me."

He shakes his head. "I'm following Steve Rogers," he says, finally. "Cap is great. I like Cap. But I'm following _you_. Even the stubborn you who I sometimes want to punch."

Steve touches his shoulder again, and at the contact Bucky tenses and relaxes both in an instant. He looks back at Steve, who's wearing a half-smile, and something clenches in his stomach like a fist. "I'm not the only stubborn one here," Steve says, wryly.

Bucky wonders how it's possible to know someone so well and still not be able to read a look in their eye, and then if his own face is as glass as it feels or if Steve is as puzzled by him. (He's not sure which would be better at this point.) "What fun would that be?" he deadpans.

"Don't make me order you back to the barracks." Steve's so much more comfortable being flippant. Then it's all clear. It's so much simpler than he wanted to think, and it cuts right through the confusion and the noise in his mind and heart. He snaps a salute, gaining a grin from Steve, and they head back. The dizzy distraction he wanders behind Steve with is new, tinted with faint horror and more self-awareness than he ever would have thought to ask for.

When he's lying in the dark, half-ensnared by dreams, it's not exactly a happy feeling. It's not exactly misery, either. It strikes a strangely satisfying balance, and makes everything in his life ten thousand times clearer than even facing down mad scientists and certain death had.

Take down Hydra. Save Steve. Survive, for Steve. Get back to Millie and Flossie and Bobby and tell them all the war stories he can remember and tell them his stupidest jokes and give them literally anything they want, at least for the first few weeks. Set Steve up with Agent Carter for good, then get a girl of his own, and be ready to go out dancing on Saturday nights.

It doesn't sound simple, but it is. This is what you do for people you love. You give, you give everything you have and that you can get your hands on, because you already have what you want and what you need. You have them.

* * *

Then he sobers up.

He's a sniper. His perspective's shot when it comes to Steve, his aim all skewed when he's too close to something. The noise in his head makes it impossible to focus, and it gets louder the more miserable he allows himself to get. But the further he pulls away from Steve, from everything, in one last try to stay cool, the more intolerable it becomes, unfairly enough.

Tonight, an incredibly amused Steve is explaining about Jones, Morita, and the story they both told him earlier, with as different interpretations as possible - both involving one, but not the other, dancing with three French girls separately - as Bucky cleans his rifle. He's only hearing half of it, and still knows when to laugh, or smile. The not knowing, now, is poisoning even this.

The not knowing is guaranteed suffering, but _acting_... could ruin everything. Everything. His entire life could fall apart with one touch. But they're alone, for once, he could die tomorrow, and Steve's just so brilliantly Steve, and he wants to be back home in Brooklyn, before Pearl Harbor, before all this. He wants to save them both from this, even if they can save the world, selfishly enough, to go back to who they were before, to be themselves, not the ranks they fought and risked their lives to earn.

In the end he's too weak to fight it. The need and the despair together, paired and fueling it all, win out. He takes Steve's face in his hands and kisses him. The conflict between them roaring in his head gives him a rush of elation even past the terror; it all seems to happen in slow motion. Steve is first frozen against him, then puts a hand to Bucky's chest, and in the instant Bucky is sure Steve is going to shove him away he doesn't, and takes his shirt in hand to keep him close. They kiss again, briefly, lingering; as the lust and impulse begin to cool in his head, Bucky thinks he understands now, what Steve's been holding back and why, and maybe Steve has realized the same of him.

This could ruin everything. _Everything_. His entire life could fall apart in one moment. But they're alone, for once, he could die tomorrow, and Steve's just so Steve, and he wants to be back home in Brooklyn, before Pearl Harbor, before all this. He wants to save them both from this even if they _can_ save the world, selfishly enough, however they can be who they were before, to be themselves, not the ranks they fought and risked their lives to earn.

"I had to know," Bucky murmurs, so softly his voice almost breaks.

Steve nods, and looks him in the face again with a small smile. "You should have known," he deadpans; he doesn't seem to know what else to do. "Who else've I got?"

"For a start, an entire country or three full of women, you asshole," Bucky says, and smiles, in spite of everything. This feels real. Steve feels real. Even behind enemy lines, the world on the line, they can be people, free to do stupid things like kiss their guy best friend while at barracks, and isn't that the point?

(Probably the US Army wouldn't agree. Bucky is too high on this to care.)

* * *

It's easy enough to get time to themselves. Getting enough time, completely uninterrupted, with the least amount of suspicion before or after, that's the problem. They can't afford rumors or jokes. Bucky doesn't matter, not as much as Steve does. Steve could win this entire war.

At first, they're too scared to do more than steal the briefest kiss or let a touch linger too long; considering how long they've been holding back even the slightest feelings like this, that's doable, but it doesn't last forever. The time he drunkenly kisses Steve outside Augsburg (and does all but dip him), they neck for ten minutes like idiots, and that's when it starts to become a problem, all the time, randomly, like they're damn teenagers. Bucky hits his head against the showerhead, not on purpose, but doesn't mind, because he deserves it, with his cock and mind betraying him again.

As usual, four Hail Marys does the trick. Eventually. Almost. _Dammit._

Steve. Right now, when he's not looking through a scope, that's all he wants. Steve's not a total innocent but he seems constantly surprised at how badly Bucky wants him when they're necking; Bucky's a stand-up guy, mind, but he doesn't tend to go for girls who are _that_ straight-laced, or at least if they are they make a good show of not being so, and it's new how damn arousing it is to have Steve squirming happily against him. It's just new overall - the solid feel of a man's body crushed against his, no long hair for fingers to tangle into, just a neck, shoulders, a body to pull closer, and a clear damn indicator just how well or not the whole thing's going pressed right up against your leg.

"No time," Steve mumbles between kisses, presses a kiss to Bucky's neck, sighing as his head lolls back against the bark of the tree. "We should go."

"Not yet," Bucky persists, looking up slightly; God almighty, he's half-hard and Steve has to know it. "Please."

Steve hesitates for an agonizingly long moment, then Bucky pulls him into a kiss, and Steve shifts, angles, and presses his hips against Bucky's; the heat and feel of his cock against his own is fantastic. It's good that they're kissing, because he can't imagine what sound he might have made openly, or how loud. Steve pulls back only enough to stop the kiss, their lips close enough to brush, and Bucky informs him, in a low, dry tone, "You made it worse."

"I hadn't noticed," Steve says. Bucky smirks. Steve smiles, though, and it's a little bit evil, and he realizes, shit. Until now he thought he'd seen every possible look on Steve Rogers's face. _God, I want to fuck you_ is a new one for him, though, and he can't say he has a problem with that. "Are we going?"

Bucky shakes his head and kisses him harshly, again, letting his hand slip between them and the incredible heat there. He palms Steve's cock through his pants, nips at his lower lip, and presses his cock against Steve's thigh, and Steve groans. This is usually the point with a girl that he has to make a choice about who's going to get off tonight, because it won't be both of them unless he's in way over his head with her and doesn't mind. But this is Steve. He made his choice a long time ago.

"Buck," Steve mumbles between kisses, as he undoes Steve's pants. "It's been too long, we should - "

"We should," Bucky agrees, and reaches into his pants, taking Steve's cock into his hand only to feel both his cock and his body stiffen against his touch. "We could."

Steve's eyes drift shut and he bites his lip and there's no going back from here, Bucky thinks. Before Bucky can do anything, Steve is decisive as ever; he pulls his pants down enough to free his cock and pins Bucky to the tree with a kiss and a hand to his shoulder, undoing Bucky's pants much more swiftly and with less hesitation disguised as teasing. This is what it is, and his heart is all dizzily syncopated like good jazz and a busy dance floor when they press against each other and kiss hungrily. It's amazing how it's such a rush and indescribable but how clear his head is when he's fucking his cock up against Steve's, his hand desperately wrapping around Steve's cock to feel the blood pulse through it, and Bucky's cock slipping in and out of Steve's eventually deliberate grip -

Steve gets there first, biting down hard on Bucky's lip and kissing him fiercely to stay quiet as he presses his cock desperately into Bucky's hand, then he comes all over; Bucky pulls away from the kiss, sees Steve panting, sweating, bereft, and pale, sees his Steve, and then that Steve squeezes his cock and works him harder, and he kisses him and the moment comes faster than he's used to it, the clench inside and shock of pleasure at his spine all happening at once. Steve kisses him languidly as he comes, and thank God they picked a tree to land on or they might have collapsed in a pile of military dress and come.

Bucky's the first one to laugh. Then Steve grins, and kisses him, and makes a crack about assigning cleanup duty.

It's fucked up. But it's fantastic.

(He sucks Steve off at the SRS when Peggy's on mission and he looks miserable, and they never talk about it again - but keep doing it, because holy hell. Steve fucks him, eventually, when Hydra's running scared, and they go back to their barracks. Bucky lies there, awake, for almost the whole night. The first round was nothing. This is the first time he's been truly scared of how he undeniably feels, and what it means. But they don't stop.)

* * *

Zola had to be bringing shit through the Swiss Alps from Italy to Nazi territory. Something like that had to happen, anyway; the details are unimportant, because, in the end, that's how Bucky Barnes dies.

When someone else tells the story, it'll be one event, one sentence phrased any way, noun-verb-preposition or whatever-noun. "Bucky Barnes fell from the train; he was killed in action; he was a hero." It's different when it happens to you. It's like moments captured in camera flashes.

 _one_ : Bucky's grip on the train is gone. He falls. All he sees and hears is Steve, the look on his face, his screams. _He's failed._

 _two: Fuck._ He almost regrets starting it all with Steve, because from night one it was obvious they'd be ripped apart no matter what they'd survived to that point, and Steve would be the one left behind.

 _three:_ His throat burns and he realizes he's screaming. The white swirling below him clears, and he becomes vividly aware of the rock rushing towards him.

 _four:_ There is no impact. Just after. Pain doesn't begin to describe it. He knows he'll die; he knows this is it; he knows that he's done all he can.

 _five:_ Steve can do it, he thinks. The Commandos can do it. It's not the worst way to go, thinking of family and friends, of victory or hope.

 _six:_ The snow is almost pink. It should be red; there's red on the rock. But the snow is pink, almost, and

* * *

 _he wakes up in hell._

 _hell is agony and torture and the color of blood and ice. there's no flames or cartoon devils with horns and tails. he's delirious but there's no way this is life. he is a dead thing; he knows that. he knows that, he has accepted it._

 _there's a man whose face he knows, pince-nez glasses perched on his nose (he wonders what he knows, how he knows the things, who he is that knows things like faces and cartoons). then the man's mouth splits into a nightmare smile of razor-sharp teeth of ice. "sergeant barnes," he says, in a voice that stutters like a bad radio signal. "what a pleasure it is to see you again."_

* * *

It's

There's

There are instants. Instants where things coalesce. Moments in time where it's not the images in front of him, inside him, possessing him, the twitching of his eyelids, the impossible humming in his brain, but a realization of him, of a body and a mind and maybe even a soul, and then.

Then it stops, and it fades, and the brief flutter of life behind his eyes just ends.


	2. Chapter 2

The AU starts to kick in around here. I suggest going back and reading Jumping, Falling etc if you already haven't. Thanks.

* * *

His family, Hydra, calls him the Soldier. He likes that name. Most everyone is frightened of him, and he knows they should be. Technically he can't fight or hurt any of them, though, or more accurately he shouldn't; if he does, they will reset him like a clock - or that's the idea, at least.

He catches himself thinking in English, then keeps codeswitching out loud to it on mission, and they reset him.

He breaks a spy's arm for calling him a "thing," and they reset him.

They know he will remember the reset itself, and that it happened. That's why they do it. But they treat him like he remembers nothing, so he pretends like he remembers nothing, and he doesn't remember lots of things, not in any real way. When he looks at maps and sees the United States, something happens, some thought goes through his head, some image, some feeling, but it makes no sense to him.

It's safer not to remember things.

Zola is his anchor, something he remembers. The Soldier doesn't remember much, and he likes remembering, when it's safe. "Good, good," Zola is saying to him, bringing a file over to the table where he sits. "You're being very good. I am very happy with you."

He nods, and Zola smiles - the Soldier's hands, metal and flesh, both tighten, as they almost always do, for reasons he couldn't and would never try to name - as he goes on. "We have something for you to do. Something important. Are you ready?"

"Yes," the Soldier agrees. "Where am I going?"

"India," Zola says. "You'll be briefed in a moment. I just wanted to see for myself about these rumors that you had advanced, my dear Soldier."

"Advanced on whom?" he asks blankly.

Zola adjusts his glasses, appraising him. "How do you _feel_ about being the Fist of Hydra?"

He doesn't hesitate. "I serve at the pleasure of our commander."

That answer doesn't seem to make Zola happy, which disappoints the Soldier, honestly. "Do you enjoy killing people for the good of the world?"

"I enjoy serving the good of the world," the Soldier confirms.

Zola's smile stretches thin. The Soldier does nothing, says nothing, and waits until the scientist reacts. "I will see you soon, Soldier. Do well. Be well."

The Soldier salutes. He opens the file after Zola leaves, and sees the face of the man and woman he is meant to kill. He feels no joy at the thought, and has only a second to think on Zola's questions before the commander enters the room, speaking swiftly and curtly. His focus zeroes in on the mission.

There is nothing but the mission. There can't be anything but the mission. He is the Fist of Hydra, and what good is a leader without a hand to lead his people by?

* * *

The Soldier doesn't like to sleep. There is the sleep that comes with the ice, and he doesn't mind that. It takes away the people he doesn't like from Hydra and brings in new faces, some of which he doesn't like either, but brings new technology, new weapons, and change, which he likes most of all. The sleep that comes when his missions stretch out over long periods of time, the sort that drags his eyelids down and makes him see things that aren't real, were never real, could not be real, is the kind he doesn't like.

Zola says these disturbing images are called dreams, and they're just accidents in the brain. The Soldier doesn't understand how things can get into your brain from outside, if you've never seen them or heard them or touched them.

Zola's eyes are bright behind his glasses when he asks about this. "What is it you dreamed of, Soldier?" he asks.

"Metal spikes," he answers, "and a rubber ball. And a girl."

It gives Zola pause. "Strange indeed," he says. "I don't recall anything like this in your time here."

"Did I kill the girl?" The question is out of his mouth before he can retrieve it, and he regrets it immediately. "The girl with the yellow ribbons in her hair."

Zola looks at him for a long moment, and the Soldier knows. He knows this isn't good, that admitting this was a mistake, and now the yellow of her ribbons and the warmth of her laughter will be shattered by the reset. "I will admit I don't know," Zola says. "Does it matter?"

"No," the Soldier says, immediately; that was an order, and he knows how to follow orders.

"I am worried about you, my dear Soldier," Zola says, smoothly, and he nods, lowering his gaze. "Come. To the lab. Let's see what we can do to ease your pain."

* * *

It's not that the Soldier doesn't see color, or that there isn't much color where he is most often kept. It's that the corrupt and nearly unsalvageable world outside is spattered with brighter and more intense colors, on the simplest things, on cars, on buildings, on overpasses, everywhere.

Red isn't a problem, it's familiar, the color of blood or the star painted on his shoulder; it's so palpable he can almost taste it, and it makes sense to him.

(He traces the star at night in the safehouse. The gesture feels familiar, but different, all at once, and he feels the absence of something, touches the air in front of him as though it'll call something into existence in front of him. No one is there. His family is there.)

When it's the white-gray mottled hue of ice he thinks of the sleep that the chamber brings, and it makes sense to him. The gray-green-black of gunmetal makes sense to him. It's the bright blues and reds and yellows of cars, the vivid green of trees in spring, the buzzing audio-visual assault of neon, that overwhelm him, that make him taste things in the back of his throat that he can't name.

It doesn't matter, in the end. Half of the detail and staggering reality of it all leaves each time he's led back into the lab and they place the instrument in his mouth.

Today, there is a yellow car, small and cramped-looking, which his mission has centered around following. The Soldier doesn't want to dwell on what might happen if he enjoys the taste the yellow brings to mind (something sweet and sour and something chemical that bites in a not unpleasant way) too much.

They don't see into the Soldier's head - as far as he knows.

He's focused. He's never not focused. Everything but the mission is a secondary reaction, second nature, old instinctive mental rituals that detract from the mission. The moment arrives. He takes the shot.

The man falls, and the people on the street panic, the people in the car climb out, and it's as simple as this - he picks off the second target, the woman in a short dress with tall blonde hair, and only then does the security realize where he is and begin to fire.

He picks off one, two, three, and his mission is over. He runs.

(There's no point in killing all those who oppose Hydra now. They'll embrace their true family when the time is right.)

He isn't sure he understands enjoyment, and even if he does he isn't sure he enjoys this. But it is a purpose. It's a reason to be woken up from the ice and to see the sky blazing blue above him, feel the gentle grip of yellow sunlight on his skin, to glimpse blood blooming on bright flower dresses and starched white shirts. And maybe that's what enjoyment is.

The Soldier returns to the facility. He is docile as they put the instrument in his mouth, and is led to the chamber without a fight.

He doesn't have a concept of years. The file numbers get higher; his family ages; this is how he measures change. They want him to remember things, but they don't want him to remember much. There are still the missions, more than he could count even if the lab people who aren't Zola weren't trying to make sure he can't remember anything at all, based on the delay between the reset time and his ability to even understand a briefing.

The clocks twitch. They twitch forward from the nine to the twelve, or the twelve to the six, but never backwards, which pains him for reasons he can't really name.

"It's not a straightforward process," the lab people say to Zola. "We haven't perfected him yet, but we're close."

Eventually they push too hard, and the clock hands twitch again, wildly, but never backwards; his head throbs, threatens to explode, and blood pours from his nose. He is incoherent but he understands enough of what's happened and gives them hell for it, shedding his share of blood to give them a reminder of who to fear.

He remembers it all.

At long last Zola leads him out of the detention cell and sits him down.

"I knew this day would come," he says; his eyes shine behind his glasses with something that makes the Soldier's throat stop. "That you would actualize, in and of yourself, away from your unfortunate past. And I am happy with what you have become, my Soldier. It is time we trust you further."

The Soldier just nods, uncertain of what to say, and Zola laughs, a broad and open laugh for a man so small and now so worn and old. "You are to eliminate a great enemy of Hydra," he says. "This will prove you are one of us, for now, forever. Do you understand?"

"Yes," the Soldier says. He wonders why he wouldn't be one of Hydra, then, why the Fist wouldn't be part of the body, why the Soldier wouldn't be part of the army. He meets Zola's gaze, though. There's no point arguing. It's a mission. "When?"

"Tomorrow." Zola's small, still vicious smile breaks out. "Get sleep. And, Soldier - whatever you do, do not dream."

He still remembers. The girl's face is unclear, but the sunlight and shade and the air and feel of the rubber ball in his hand, they're all as clear as this moment, and the solid fact of his feet on the ground. He lifts the corner of his mouth, just slightly, in answer to Zola, and goes to his barracks.

* * *

As they fly to the location, the team exchanges looks, as ever. The Soldier delivers terse orders in Russian to keep them busy, quiet them, and remind them who could easily throw them off the plane if it comes to that. He did not have a good night's sleep.

Of course he's used to a troubled existence, trusting in his family to weigh the balance between lesser and greater evils. This is the nature of being Hydra, nonetheless the use of the Fist of Hydra himself. This is different. Zola questioning his loyalty, the sudden need for proof of who the Soldier is and who he always will be, even after what must have been twenty years, has forced him to try to think of things locked away too far from reach.

 _Why?_

It's a word he knows. It's not a word he's ever chosen to dwell on.

Finally, the train is in sight. Snow is lightly falling from the sky, the same white-gray of the ice of his chamber window, and the Soldier nearly smiles. They parachute down once the plane can navigate closely enough. Once inside, one of the commandants says, "Sir. You have your orders. We have ours."

"I know," the Soldier says, and recalls the makeshift map of the train's compartments as he dismisses half of the team. "Go. Do your work." He looks back at the remaining support team flanking him, and nods curtly.

The whole train is SHIELD. No civilian losses, no one the world will mourn when Hydra saves the world from itself. They gun down two or three compartments' worth of agents without much of a fight, the Soldier doing the bulk of the legwork with the weapons on both on board and brought along with them. Then a door slams open; the Soldier dodges gunfire, blocks shots with his arm, and fires the machine gun. The assailant ducks into the compartment and fires her pistol at him, and as he moves to evade her gunfire and draw closer, bring her into physical combat, he sees her face.

In the file, he saw a name. A description. A date of birth, military experience. There would be "high-level agents," his objective to "minimize losses and bring an end to the reign of SHIELD in a supposedly neutral nation." It didn't include a photo. This is the test, and he is failing it, because there is a weathered and beautiful woman in front of him who his trigger finger refuses to put down like a rabid animal, and this _cannot happen_. Not now.

"I know who you are," she says in English, her English accent crisp, her dark eyes flashing, her red lips in a firm line. "Put down your weapon, Soldier. And I'll let you live."

The address stops him, and he looks at her. She's SHIELD. She has to die. This instinct to refuse is a traitor's voice in his head, against all that he is. Still... _You're important,_ he can't help but think at her as he stares at her, seconds passing like hours as he remains frozen to the spot. _I can't let you die._

It's too much. He doesn't know what to do. He reaches for what he knows, the red of blood spreading ( _and pink_ , he thinks, out of nowhere) and the white-gray of snow-crystals, and rushes at her. Her cartridge runs out with her last shot - he slams her into the wall with his arm, strangles her, clenches his metal fist around her throat, then drops her there where she collapses, blood blushing red on her neck in color so vivid it inexplicably makes the Soldier's stomach turn. Then he leaves the compartment and the Swiss Alps are outside, the snow swirling in a way that's both terrifying for reasons he doesn't understand, and reassuring, too, because he will be asleep soon.

He jumps.


	3. Chapter 3

His eyes open, slowly. His sight focuses. There's a woman looking at him, an older woman, wearing something that magnifies one of her eyes. He thinks of the covers of detective novels, and that's when she talks and breaks the relative peace of his thoughts.

"Mr. Barnes," she says, in a tone very close to friendly, and raises the magnifier. "I'm very glad to see you awake."

Instantly he is flooded with hatred, and the near irresistible urge to kill her. She's frightened, and rightly so; it's a fact of life, that he could swat her out of existence like a fly. He experimentally moves his real hand - his _what_ hand? - he realizes he's in restraints. He looks back at her, measured. "Where is he," he asks evenly.

"I'm happy to answer any questions you have about where you are and the people you want to see," the woman says, quickly. "Before that, though, I... my name is Dr. Cora Browning, I am your doctor, and I have to do some things to treat you before I can free you from restraints. Is that all right?"

"Do what you have to," he says. He feels more like himself again. Whatever that means. Whatever good a severed Fist can be, whatever good a soldier gone outlaw can be. "Just let me talk to Zola. Get it over with."

The doctor looks too surprised for it to be anything but a genuine reaction. "You mean Arnim Zola?"

"Yes. Arnim Zola," the Soldier says, shortly. "He owes me this."

"I'll be right back," the doctor says, and ducks away. The Soldier strains to catch a glance or an earful of what she might be reporting to any of the Hydra agents outside, but no luck, which is no surprise.

He pulls at the other restraint, and almost nothing happens. That's when he realizes they've taken off his left arm. He can still feel his fingers curling, tensing, his muscles straining at the restraints that do hold him down, but when he looks there's nothing there.

He can still escape, or take his revenge, or get them to kill him, with one arm. He's not a wind-up soldier, he's the Soldier; he can work all this to his advantage.

Just as he's starting to test the restraints again, harder, the doctor reappears, with a lanky scientist in a labcoat following her and talking about nothing that she seems to have any interest in. "Mr. Barnes," she greets him again. "This is my associate Dr. Fitz. He's going to help me with your care from now on, but I just asked him to go look in the archives for some information that might be of interest."

Fitz steps forward, far too happily, and the Soldier tenses; he's got a piece of glass over his eye that reminds him too much of Zola and his small eyeglasses. Now he's wondering, _why do I hate Zola?_ He's not sure he actually remembers, not right now. Time enough for that once he finds Zola and tortures him. "Yes, yes," the doctor is saying, holding out a file, "here you are, Arnim Zola, piece of work, that man, I should say - "

"Larry," the other doctor says patiently, "he can't take the file. He's restrained."

"Oh, yes, of course," Fitz says, fumbling, and goes for the keys on his belt.

"Fitz!" she hisses.

"Oh Cora give me a moment, these things are awful - "

"I don't need a file, I know who he is," the Soldier says coolly, talking over the babbling doctor as he fumbles with the one restraint before Dr. Cora bats him off. "What about him?"

She straightens. "He's dead," she says bluntly. "And has been for some time. You have nothing to fear from him or his like."

"What about you?" the Soldier asks, without missing a beat.

"We resuscitated you, Mr. Barnes, we want to return you to as normal a life as you can have, or give you a new purpose, the - "

He almost smiles. "The glory of Hydra, right?"

Both doctors falter at that. "No," Fitz says, slowly. "We're with SHIELD. Hydra lost the war, Mr. Barnes, a long time ago. I suppose you missed some of that. As well as one half of the Cold War. Heavens."

"Some time has passed since you were last awake," Dr. Cora adds, with a warning look to Fitz. "Which I am willing to wager is something you're quite used to. This may be a longer stretch of time than you were used to, however." She hesitates. "It's 2012."

"2012," he repeats, coolly skeptical.

"Later in the year, at that," Fitz says warmly.

Cora sighs. "We understand if you have trouble believing this. Things will become clearer in time."

Fitz interrupts, leaning closer to him and blocking his view of Cora. "Time indeed! We're with SHIELD, who to my knowledge you have crossed paths with, though you may not remember," he says keenly. "SHIELD is the natural descendant of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, with whom you worked with quite closely before all this unfortunate business with, I suppose, the Russians? But we'll discuss that. Shall we begin?"

The Soldier has always resented the people in the lab, and these two have overestimated his patience and suspension of disbelief. He enjoys pulling the half-undone restraint off of his wrist, and hauling Fitz closer to him to rip the keys from his belt. The other restraint unlocks quickly, and once he's freed and turns to them, Cora advances on him with a baton brandished.

When the Soldier straightens, steps forward to challenge her, he's unsteady on his legs but also because, _his arm_. His arm is gone. It makes him sick to be without it.

"Let me go and I won't kill you both," he says, contemplating the pale and pathetic scientists in front of him, with nothing but the baton between the two of them.

"We only want to help you, Mr. Barnes," Fitz begins hurriedly.

"We can discuss any terms you like," Cora agrees. "We have people who can help you - who want to help you."

That is so incomprehensible, so awful to say, that he laughs, for an instant, and it's not at all pleasant, reminding him of Zola's smiles and jibes, and that just makes it worse. "Who would want to _help me_?" Before they can react, he moves forward and knocks Cora's block off with his shoulder, taking the baton.

"Right, then," Cora says, decisively, and takes out a small white rectangular thing. There's the immediate sound of advancing guards outside, and the Soldier's legs are still weak but he gets out of the room, finally armed, in time to his most unimpressed look at the incoming soldiers. They aren't dressed like any Hydra or SHIELD the Soldier has ever seen, but that's no guarantee; these things change. He fights off two with the baton, and knocks out a third when he finds a button on it that blasts them with electricity.

All of the sudden it's much more useful.

As the fighting slows down (there's only a handful left, now) he can hear the doctors panicking, probably into a radio. "We need help! WE'RE GOING TO NEED HELP! Barnes has broken his restraints and I don't think - oh - oh dear lord - "

The Soldier just looks at them, as they huddle down, and steps inside, looking coldly for a weapon that would be more easily and quickly lethal. "I gave you a chance. Lock the door."

Just as Fitz locks and bars the door, the Soldier is picking up a rather large scalpel from a tray of medical instruments with interest. "I wouldn't keep these out in the open if I were you," he says.

Someone's outside again, but the Soldier doesn't care until the door explodes open, taking some of the wall with it, and a man is standing there lowering a shield painted with American red-white-and-blue. The Soldier is too surprised to react, and the American stares at him for a moment.

It is too strange for words, then, and it occurs to him that this weakness, Zola would say, begs a merciful death. Then he meets the American's eyes and it's instant. He backs up, further, then, because one glance at this man, his eyes, pulls something irresistibly forward, out of him, this thing he and Hydra worked so hard to bury under missions for decades so he could be the Fist of Hydra. Even struggling with it has made him feel more human than he ever has.

It is not safe. He is not safe.

"Bucky," the man says, and tenses as the Soldier goes on the defensive, wielding the scalpel to keep them from advancing. " _Bucky._ " He's trying to catch the Soldier's gaze again, but he can't allow it - oh, but the insane jolt of awful gut-wrenching joy he gets from it… "It's me, Steve! Tell me you recognize me."

"Who the hell is Bucky?" the Soldier demands, his scalpel raised, looks across the faces in the room, lingering on the newest one, briefly. "Who are _you_? _Where the hell am I?_ "

(And what the hell are the Dodgers?)

But it's not as easy as just asking. Because it's complicated, and his brain is a mess, and Dr. Cora says they have a lot of work to do before they can start getting into too much.

 _Bucky is you_ , they say, _or who you used to be. As for us..._

He's honestly too exhausted to argue the specifics. All of that's less important than dropping the scalpel and letting himself hear what they're saying. The Soldier has never met Steve, but he knows him in a way that makes his stomach twist in excitement and face flush in a confusingly betraying way. He knows him. His mind, what's left of it, what he's escaped from Hydra with, looks at Steve and says, fondly, _Mine_ , like it does to his arm. Steve is part of him, defines him, or at least what he used to be.

 _Bucky_ , he thinks to himself as he tries to drift to the awful sleep of dreamers. _Bucky Barnes._

* * *

He sees nothing in his sleep that he remembers upon waking, but when he wakes the world is different. The ice is melting. He's beginning to see, and feel, and taste, and it's too much. _James Buchanan Barnes._ He has a name, not a title, but it doesn't feel right, except for when Steve says it.

This session, Dr. Cora quietly takes notes while Steve talks about New York, and everyone hopes they don't wander over a mental tripwire. "I had a family?" he asks Steve after a moment.

"Yeah, yeah, you did," Steve says, and smiles. "Oldest of four kids. I don't know what I'd have done without any of you."

"Sisters?" The dream's such an old memory now, blurred by time and confusion, but to think he'd once been anything but a weapon on two legs... maybe Zola wasn't lying. Maybe that girl and her smile are still in the world.

Steve's smile falters. "Yeah," he says. "Millie. Flossie."

He's not sure he even wants to ask. "They're... all right." The expression that crosses Steve's face just confirms it. "Right. 2012. Did they at least..."

"Flossie's alive," Steve says, scratching the back of his neck. "When you're better, we should go see her, just… I don't know how much longer she'll last, Buck."

He's nauseous. He wasn't supposed to remember things, not things like this. _It's not safe._ "Can you show me?"

"Show you - ?"

He gestures helplessly at his face, and drops his head, hair obscuring his view of Steve, but not enough that he doesn't see the notebook and pencil Steve produces.

"It won't be how she looks now," Steve tells him, dryly, as he opens up a page, "I hate to tell you. Not everyone's aged as well as us."

He offers a small smile at that, and tries to ignore the mental seasickness that feels all too familiar by now; he wants to see this. He doesn't want to fight with him again, either, or to be sedated and restrained like the monster he was (is) with Hydra; he wants to be able to hear these things, see them, the things, that aren't stained with blood and don't remind him of the metallic taste of the instrument and the jolt of the reset.

He's breathing shallowly, keeping his mind clear, when Steve touches his shoulder. When he looks up at the notebook, there's a sketch of a girl there, a teenage girl, pretty, with a crooked smile and curled hair. He holds onto the notebook to confirm it's there, looks into Steve's face to confirm that this isn't all a lie – but how could Steve have reached into his head and pulled out that face? – then exhales shakily. "Flossie," he says. "This is..."

"Yeah," Steve says, clears his throat, and hurriedly wipes his eyes. "She's gonna be so glad to see you, Buck."

His head hurts, but it's not like the pain of the resets. It's the opposite; there's too much in his head and no space in which to rearrange it. He can't think past it all, and he breaks down, his face in his hand, in his lap, shaking. _You didn't kill her. You didn't kill any of them._

He didn't even have to know they were there to worry about them. Maybe he knew the whole time, somehow. Maybe he was Bucky the whole time.

That thought manages to make it worse. He doesn't talk for the rest of the day, but doesn't fight when Steve touches him, reassures him, and puts his arms around him for some small comfort in the face of all this.

* * *

When they talk to the Russian agent, Romanov, about the brainwashing techniques that could have been used on him, some "interesting" ideas come up between Drs. Fitz and Cora, with Romanov chiming, helpfully dry, on which ideas could go particularly badly. Eventually, though, they come up with workable ideas, medical, technical, psychological, and all more than a little science-fictional, or at least that's how they sound to him. Either way he is _unflinchingly_ willing to undergo any or all treatment.

Dr. Cora says he doesn't have to sleep in restraints anymore, with his unconscious triggers apparently deactivated and a guard presence and security on him 24/7. He lies awake thinking about the flickers of overwhelming pain and joy he saw through Bucky's eyes, in the memories that sifted through the mess of triggers for pulling and reins for guiding the Fist of Hydra home. So he goes to Steve's barracks to find him awake, staring at the ceiling. When Steve looks to where he stands at the door, he sits up, clearly concerned. "Hey. Everything all right?"

"You forgive me, right?" he asks, leaning against the doorjamb.

Steve starts forward. "Bucky - "

"I don't want to be him if I'm just going to - dishonor his memory," he presses. "By being weak, by giving in and hurting people, for whatever reason. He sounds better than that."

"There's no _he_ ," Steve insists, approaching him. "There's just you."

He backs up, just a step. "I don't want there to be a Bucky if you won't forgive him," he says, unsettled but firm. "I think... that would be too much. For everyone. I don't want to bring him back if it would hurt everyone."

Steve steps closer, trying to catch his gaze, though he avoids it. "Bucky Barnes is my best friend. Hydra hurt him, and I'll make any of those sons of bitches left who I can find pay for that. But Bucky would know this, I promise, that after everything we've been through, I'd forgive him just about anything. And I'll do whatever I have to, to make sure he realizes that."

It could be the sincerity in his voice, the genuine pain in his face, or it could be that he _is_ Bucky Barnes and he knows Steve utterly and completely and did for years, but he believes him. He reaches out with a hand, the nonverbal cue that's come into play since his rehabilitation. _Anchor me._ Steve reaches out without hesitation, and holds onto his hand firmly.

His eyes drift shut, and there's an instant where things coalesce, where his dreams, his memory, the stirrings of life that come when he's with Steve, all come together in a shocking, joyfully overwhelming rush, and he remembers and feels and loves and hates, he is _real_ , he is a man, not an asset, not a thing to be used and abused for any purpose.

(He can question. He can choose.)

When he opens his eyes, he feels himself wearing the smallest smile, and Steve's returning one. "Stay with me," he half-asks, and, upon getting a nod, shuts the door and leads him to the bed.

* * *

His eyes open. As he blinks sleep from them he sees Steve lying next to him, his face content. He realizes then that this is the first night he can remember truly sleeping without incident, fear, or numbness, and that his instincts aren't screaming at him to run or to fight as he wakes. This is a rare moment of peace, and there's no question of why.

Something stirs in him, something not unpleasant, a memory drawn from a memory. He remembers tracing the star on his arm at night, and an ache he knew he could never voice or dare to think, something he'd lost too long ago to bother remembering. He remembers, and it's safe.

Steve stirs, and wakes, stretching, and he glances away, leaning back on his shoulders and rubbing his face to snap himself out of it some. "Hey," Steve's saying, voice hushed, and as soft a smile on his face. "Everything good?"

He nods. He doesn't know what to say, but this moment, this intimacy, is more intense than almost anything he's experienced in seventy years. He sits up, slightly, turns to Steve, and is more insecure than he could imagine as he finds Steve watching him, a gentle look on his face. But he has to do it; the urge is compelling in a visceral way his orders never were. He touches the very tip of his index finger to Steve's chest and traces the Captain America star now absent but forever emblazoned there in spirit, his gaze flickering away from Steve's when he can no longer stand that amazing stunned expression he gets whenever he sees Bucky in the Soldier's face. He doesn't move upon finishing the gesture, his touch lingering, and Steve smiles before he moves to meet him in a kiss.

 _Mine._ He might be anchored forever with this kiss alone. There's no doubt in his mind who he was, what he is, and what he will be.

"Steve," he mumbles against his lips when they break.

"Yeah?"

"'s me. I'm back."

Steve pushes his hair back behind his ear, clearly unsure of how to answer that at first. "Don't rush. We've got time."

No. Steve doesn't get it. Maybe he doesn't either, though. For the first time he can think of himself as Bucky, and it's so... personal and human that it still doesn't feel completely right to him. But neither does _the Soldier._ He'll figure it out. "But _it's a war_ and I'm not leaving you alone, Cap. Just, I'm with you," he says, blindly. "'Til the end."

The next kiss is harder, insinuating more with just a shift on the bed, and Bucky gives in, lets Steve lower him back down to the mattress for ease of his shoulder, as they kiss again. "I can't believe I'm going to say this but I like the hair," Steve says, finally, and grins when Bucky laughs.

"It's not regulation, is it?"

Steve leans into him. "Neither's the arm, but they're giving that back to you, aren't they?"

That somehow surprises him. "I thought Fitz was working on it for fun. Or research."

He shrugs. "Why build you a whole new arm when we're in the middle of a war and you have a superpowered one already? It's like you forgot about rationing."

"For shame," Bucky agrees, dryly. "But, really? Even with..."

"It's not about who you were or what you did, not anymore," Steve tells him, curling his fingers into his hair. It stops Bucky's breath for a moment, just the touch. "It's about what you can do."

He can't help being a cynic. "Missions?"

"You can do good," Steve says, firmly. "Whether it's on mission parameters or not."

"I think Fury might find 'good' a little bit subjective."

"I'm not taking Fury's advice on the moral high ground. I know you know what's right." Bucky's eyes drift shut for a second while Steve's twining a strand of his hair around a finger, a delicate and absent gesture. "And the team, too. I trust them. Even Stark."

"Stark," Bucky repeats. That sounds familiar. "Wait."

"You remember Howard? Yeah. His son's the one who won't shut up in mess. Knows his way around the tech, though, total science geek."

"He looked familiar. Sort of." He smiles, a little. "Except he doesn't look like a science geek."

"Millions of dollars can buy you a nice haircut. Buck, we're off topic."

"What's the topic again?"

"You were good enough for my team," Steve says; Bucky opens his eyes and looks to him, finding an embarrassingly genuine smile there. "You're almost way too good for this one."

"They'll never trust me," he points out, a little horrified. "I don't trust me."

"You'll have your chance to prove it. I promise. Now come on. We have ten minutes to get to Dr. Cora."

 _You can't make this go faster, Mr. Barnes_ , she says. _This is a process. I will admit you're improving faster than I expected, but we should be cautious._

But he's Bucky again. Why would he want to pull back from this?

* * *

The day after Fitz implants Bucky's arm, it wakes him in the night by starting to make hand signals in his sleep. It would be disturbing if it wasn't so annoying, and he glares at it, fumbling to get the light on so he can see what it's up to.

It's moving swiftly, almost too fast for him to register exactly what it's trying to communicate, and eventually he figures out that these gestures are totally useless and not telling him a goddamn thing. Damn it; he can't pull on a shirt with his hand being an asshole. He storms out of his bunk and to the lab, a little relieved to see Fitz there tinkering in the near dark. "Dr. Fitz," he says, sharply.

"Wow, oh, yes, all right," Fitz says rapidly, backing up, and it occurs only then to Bucky that a few days ago he'd been storming in there to kill them. He backs off some, a little apologetic, and Fitz sighs. "What can I do for you, Mr. Barnes?"

Bucky raises his hand; the gestures have slowed some, but damn are they irritating. "Make it stop." He pauses. "...Please."

Fitz's eyebrows raise, and the eyepiece threatens to fall from his eye, but he catches it with a practiced motion, and replaces it with plain dignity. "That's interesting," he says, and leans in to watch the fingers twist and the engineered muscles tense. "I don't understand what it's saying."

"I don't either," Bucky confirms, slowly. "But can we make it stop?"

"I suppose we're going to have to, that looks uncomfortable, and you mustn't be able to sleep." Fitz nods. "Come sit, let me do some work. Or would you prefer that I remove it?"

He shakes his head quickly, sitting down across from Fitz, who reaches for the bag of tools. "All right, let's start! Do you want to be able to see what I'm doing? You weren't exactly awake or present before."

Bucky blinks; his eyes are heavy again. "It doesn't matter to me. I just want to sleep."

"Well, that might have to wait, hate to say," Fitz says, and begins to dig into the arm, which results in a lot of sounds that are not comforting at all. Bucky decides to close his eyes and listen to Fitz ramble, which is more comforting than the other option.

When he wakes, face and hair stuck to the lab table with sweat and drool, his arm is still, but mostly working (his index finger keeps twitching up and down whenever he starts using it). Fitz is face-deep in an experiment, and he tries to show him, but the doctor waves him off with an excuse and mutters something about Iron Man, so he just goes.

It's 0600. People on duty already are looking at him as he goes past, and he can't blame them, really. Even if everyone didn't already know he was a notorious former Hydra assassin formerly in the employ of SHIELD's predecessor and Captain America's best friend, he's still a shirtless guy with a metal arm who just woke up in a science lab. It's conspicuous.

Steve might already be in the gym by now; it's worth checking. He looks in, and Steve's not there, but - "Agent Romanov."

"Hey," Romanov says, and looks up from her shoelaces at him with amusement. "I know, don't tease the amnesiac, but did you actually forget a shirt?"

"It wasn't really an option at the time," Bucky says with a shrug, and goes to sit next to her. Romanov continues tying her shoes. "It's early."

She shakes her head. "Not early enough. You want to train?"

He hesitates. "I'm not sure it's fair."

Romanov smiles; it makes him remember something, someone, but it's too indistinct to get into now. "Do you know how many people have said that to me?" she's asking him.

"A lot, probably. But they don't have metal arms."

She laughs. "True. Fury might kill me. How much do you think that's worth?"

"Considering that we have no idea who built it or how I'm going to assume a lot," Bucky says. "Assuming you could leave a dent, of course."

"As long as it's not Asgardian or tesseract tech, I think I'll be fine," Romanov says easily. "Even Chitauri weaponry is relatively weak. They had numbers, but in retrospect I was underwhelmed. Shall we?"

Bucky looks at her; she's completely serious, and if all the things she said at the start of his treatment were true, she might actually be able to keep up without superpowers or whatever. He nods, and they go into the training room and lay down some mats. "What do I call you?" she asks him. He freezes. "I think I know. But I want to know for sure."

"Bucky," he says, now more unsure than he likes. "Bucky Barnes. Sergeant, if you want, but I think they must have decommissioned me by now."

Romanov is casually wrapping her hands with tape. "You really feel like him already?" she asks. He likes the way her tone is expressive in a different way than the Americans on base, and he likes her small expressions and gestures. He likes her, really. "It's fast."

Bucky clenches both fists, considering the twitch he can feel in his prosthetic's wrist. _God, what now?_ "I was halfway there already. I broke through the programming decades ago. Are you done stalling?" he taunts her, with a smirk.

A smirk flickers across her face in kind, and she goes for the first blow. He knows right then that he underestimated her, which is saying a lot, because he thought he was underestimating her before. He blocks her right hook to his jaw and twists her wrist, but it keeps his left arm in check and she kicks him in the ear, sending him reeling. He goes to sweep her leg, she dodges, he punches her soundly in the head with his right hand, but she pulls him back in by his left hand. The metal skin there pulls at her flesh - it's not a sensation, he can _hear it_ \- and she jumps on top of the arm before he can react, balancing.

He has about one-sixteenth of a second to realize what's happening, then the kick to the head she lands is so hard that he reels again. Things kind of spin, and something iron and instinctive clenches in his gut.

"Oh, Romanov," he says, half-chiding, and looks down to where she's crouching. It's easy enough to fight her into a corner then; she's exhausted herself, at least almost, and the beauty of his left fist is that it never tenses or aches or cramps. He can outpace her.

It's hand to hand combat now, and the truth is he likes a gun but this has always been the most satisfying thing to him. He avoids using the left arm too much, though she's proven to not be at too much of a disadvantage, and inevitably she drops her guard for a second long enough and he can't fight the instinct to seize her by the throat with his left hand and pin her to the wall. Some memory, some image flickers through his head, just in an instant; faintly, past it, he recognizes that she's fighting back as best she can, but choking, and his fingers twitch and his hand pulls back.

She drops to the floor, and much to his surprise she's laughing within just a moment, sitting up. "Wow," she says, "one - Romanov, one - Barnes."

"You're not bad," Bucky concedes.

"Right, but I could afford to lose an arm or something, it seems to help," Natasha says blithely, rubbing at her neck. "You're one detail away from being the one-legged man at an ass-kicking competition and I'm still pretty sure you could take out half this base."

"So could you," he says dryly.

"Not without some real strategy." She rests her head against the wall, and stretches absently. "We could use you, Barnes."

He sighs. "You too? You can't _trust me_. Not yet. I could have just killed you."

Natasha shrugs, opening her eyes to look up at him dispassionately. "Take it from a fellow Russian export," she says. "There's never a perfect time where you feel totally yourself again, because you weren't yourself for so long, and being you is the only way to know yourself, so how would you know what that even means? You just... weave parts of the you that you remember, and the you that you are, together, and... find a you that feels right, as stupid as it sounds." She raises her eyebrows. "Besides. You owe the world this. The same way I did. The same way Stark does."

That makes him stop. There's a twitching in his arm again, nothing visible, but still, the _damn thing_. "I know what we did. What the hell did Stark do?"

"Arms dealers had to do something after the world wars died out," she says. "We're all trying to clear our ledgers here."

Bucky is uncomfortable with this discussion and isn't entirely sure why. _Fuck._ "I'll think about it," he says, neutrally. "I have to get something to eat."

"Yeah." Natasha pushes herself up. "Me too. Come on. Congratulations, you don't have a tail on you anymore, though I bet you noticed already."

He nods. "Why is that?" he has to ask, as they head for the mess. "What did I do?"

"Word is Dr. Browning says you're on your way to being cleared for duty. Mostly out of necessity, but I don't think she and Fitz would do it without reason. At least the SHIELD people might stop looking at you like being offered the wrong-sized fork could set you off on a killing spree. It wasn't as bad for me, but it was a pain in the ass."

He nods, hair masking his face for the necessary moment where that truly disturbs him, then goes on walking. He doesn't hear her as she goes on briefly, and she quiets some when she realizes he's deep in thought.

He's starting to make sense to himself. What he is, who he is. Maybe.

(But really, just waking up and existing shouldn't be this difficult.)

* * *

There were orders politely piped through the loudspeaker that Bucky go to the lab, so Bucky's sitting in the lab waiting for someone, probably Fitz. The lab is empty, is the thing, and that's the weirdest thing he's probably experienced since waking up besides the brief and disturbing rehashes of the brainwashing as they deconstructed his poor abused mind. The lab is never empty.

He keeps toying with the arm to see what it can or will do. It's just an arm, honestly – or he's pretty sure that's all it is, anyway – and it happens to be made of metal, so all he can do is stretch, try a few rude gestures or umpire signals that he remembers vaguely from New York summers with a far younger, far smaller Steve, and Bobby, Flossie, Millie, a few others from the neighborhood with vague faces he can't make out. It makes him smile.

"All right, yeah, let's do this," someone says from the doorway, upbeat, and Bucky looks up in surprise to see Stark sauntering towards him with the same bag of tools Fitz used on his arm. "Hey, I'm Tony Stark. Resident actually socially competent engineering genius. Also a genius in other fields, but - let me at least try at humility." He pauses, and sticks out his hand, which Bucky shakes. "There we go. Got the real hand, that's good. From what I hear, who knows what the other one might do."

"Yeah." Bucky shrugs, uncomfortable. "Call me Bucky. Barnes. Whatever." He rests his arm along the lab table, waiting, and Stark raises his eyebrows, apparently expecting stimulating conversation or something. He averts his eyes, and Stark starts opening up the arm.

"You don't remember, do you?" Stark doesn't seem to know how to stop talking. Then, that's not unlike his brief memories of Howard Stark himself. Bucky looks up briefly. "I was there when you woke up."

"Asked me questions. Yeah." He doesn't remember as much of that as he'd like to, especially since they've been working on breaking down the brainwashing, but there's also a real possibility he doesn't want to. The full and clear memory of attacking the people who brought him back might not be so great to carry around. "Dr. Cora said you should be a psychoanalyst. Whatever that is."

"Yeah. Dr. Cora's fucking with me, obviously," Stark informs him dryly, and frowns at something in the arm, taking out a welding tool.

The thing is, as Stark works, as he tries to ingratiate himself with Bucky, even, Bucky can't help but get a sense that the guy is at least trying to like him. He doesn't know anything beyond the history, probably, he knows the whole Soldier thing, and he's still actively trying to at least socialize with him and make him feel comfortable. The attitude and the hair say _I don't care_ but everything else says otherwise.

It's just not a common thing on base, people this keen and sharp in this way while still being… people, and not just soldiers.

Maybe that's what the Avengers are after all. He could be a part of that.

The arm's working, finally, and Bucky's half-smiling; between the spar with Natasha and the discussion with Stark, these are the best few hours he's had, no flashbacks, no issues, in at least a day.

That, of course, is when something literally explodes further out in the base. He ducks out of the lab, runs for the armory, and finds himself a rifle and a few pistols in case. There's cases, there, too and he opens one only to find a supply of what looks like the weird shell thing he'd seen on Stark's ear.

Damn if he's going to let the twenty-first century stump him. He puts it over his ear, too, and his instincts say it's a com. The second he turns it on with an experimental tap, his instincts are proven right.

The guns feel right in his hand, on his belt, and that scares the hell out of him, but he thinks of Romanov and her ledgers. He has to make up for the pain he caused, and this is where he's needed now.

He puts his fingers to his ear to activate the com. "Cap," he says, "see you in there."

Steve laughs, audibly astounded in the best possible way, and Bucky goes to battle. Even though it's messed up to think so, the whole thing is perfect. It doesn't matter what the versions of him before might have done in this situation or thought of his just rushing in blind, this is the first time _this_ Bucky has felt perfectly _him_.

* * *

The distance between him and his targets clears his head in the most amazing way, and suddenly he remembers more than he ever has about the war. The aliens are a little weird to see, yeah, and Stark wasn't kidding about the overdramatic alien leader guy before, but otherwise it's exactly the same. At least at first.

Something shifts in his head, something nasty, and he thinks he might vomit with the way the world pitches forward. Then he has a pistol in his hand, the scope and the rifle shoved away, and he sees Steve and the ridiculously dressed-alien right behind him. There's this split second where his mind goes yes, avidly, and focuses in on Steve – but he switches mental gears with gritted teeth and fires the pistol once, twice, at the alien who happens to be pointing his equally ridiculous spear thing feet away from where Bucky's crouched.

That was close. Not too close, but still closer than he likes. He gets back under cover and behind his scope.

It's obvious enough what the Avengers are trying to do; they're going to need heavy firepower to take this guy out, and he could go help Barton and Romanov in a more active role, but he decides to keep an eye on the Loki situation from above, and pick off hostiles near the agents, for now.

Eventually everyone else starts bitching on the coms. Fury and Stark start bickering like a married couple over an obviously important thing as vaguely as possible, which definitely has something to do with the weapon that'll take this annoying arrogant alien bastard out.

But it's jammed, Fury insists. Of course it is. Bucky cuts in once he's zeroed on it.

"Nah," he says, easily, and smirks to himself. "I've got it. You might want to get out of the way, Stark."

"What, do you even know what to - " His first shot shuts Stark up, and the second seems to shock him out of it, even though he steals a glance back to where Bucky's perched. "Holy fuck, you could have _asked_ \- "

"It was obvious," Bucky says mildly, and gets back to picking off the hostiles again. It's almost too easy, he notes, detachedly.

It all goes according to plan, or at least as much as it can expected to when there was no "invite the enemy on base" plan, really, and "let him get away" wasn't one of the objectives, probably, but Bucky thinks he's got the measure of this Loki guy.

He won't be impossible to take down. It'll just take work and timing.

Steve's okay. That helps. He's kind of wearily, dryly grinning as he meets Bucky halfway, and Bucky ducks down, catching Stark's gaze for a second. His expression changes before he can stop it, a challenging, amused raise of his eyebrows, the lift of the corner of his mouth, and he turns back to Steve.

"We have to talk," Bucky says, winded but too worked up to care. "It's important."

Steve tenses, immediately troubled. "Is something wrong?"

"No, I just… I know they took me off of surveillance. Any chance they might let me help with this Loki thing?"

He looks down, touches Bucky's shoulder, then sighs. "Can we talk about this somewhere else?"

"Yeah," Bucky says, not thrilled about the implications of that and making it clear in his tone, but this is the hand you're dealt when you're a brainwashed assassin on the mend working for the other team. He's just lucky to have his best friend with him.

* * *

"Best friend" only goes so far. The fight they have that night is less of a noise complaint problem when Steve and Bucky start it in his barracks than when Bucky goes to the gym and destroys a significant part of the wall with a couple of one-two combination punches.

He doesn't want to think about it. They don't seem to mind that he's not wandering pointlessly around base, anyway, and the next day at mess there are a hell of a lot of new people to distract everyone from what he did. There's another overdramatic alien, but this one is less of an asshole and also a friendly, so Bucky doesn't worry too much about it. The new black soldier who spends most of his time talking to Stark, Steve, and Bruce seems interesting, but Bucky's keeping his head down today and hiding in his barracks.

He feels like shit, because the back and forth on all this "join our team! wait, don't" is bullshit, and the worst thing is that they're probably right.

His face is in a pillow, which is not enough to make lying on his left arm any more comfortable, when Natasha says from his doorway, "Stop sulking."

"Romanov, I'm not in the mood," he mumbles. "Brainwashing day."

She sounds amused. That bitch. "That's what everyone's saying. I did way more damage on decent days than bad. Are you coming or not?"

"Where would I be going?" he asks, flatly.

"The gym. Or where the gym used to be. I don't know why people are reacting so poorly to the whole thing, it's not like we don't have contractors who can fix that in a week, and by then we'll be gone anyway."

"Why do you even care that I'm in here?"

"Because it makes Cap mope and I'm tired of every other day either being ripped out of my nightmares or scripted by the Degrassi writers. Get up."

"I don't understand that reference," Bucky says, looking at her coolly.

Natasha leans down and looks him in the eye, just as directly. "All of you are acting like teenagers. And it's stupid. Now come and spar with me."

Bucky sits up, and takes a breath. "I don't know."

"Well, it helps me," she says, and comes to his side to sit on the bed. "I don't do the talking thing, so don't start."

He smiles, slightly. "I wasn't planning on it, Agent Romanov."

"Good. Either you're going to the lab or you're coming with me, though. I talked Steve down from ' _make_ him go to the lab,' you're welcome."

Bucky stops smiling. "This was from Steve?"

"He's concerned about you. Don't make a big deal about it," Natasha says, firmly. "At least you aren't in light bondage right now, right?"

He sighs, heavily, and pushes his hair out of his eyes. "Right. I'll go to the lab. Maybe there'll be a miracle cure there for me."

"I doubt it," Natasha says, but smiles, just a little. "I'll be in the gym if you change your mind."

He touches her shoulder with his hand, squeezes, and returns the small smile. "Later," he says, and goes.

Both of the doctors and Steve are there when he arrives, which is actually uncommon these days, and Steve's expression is hesitant but earnest as Bucky goes to sit.

"They think this treatment could really help," he says, and the doctors nod behind him, hovering over the intimidating-looking equipment on the nearby table. "You'll just have to… be careful."

Bucky frowns. "But has Fury signed off on my – "

"He might," Steve persists. "If you try."

Bucky glances to Dr. Cora, who nods again. "It could go a long way in helping you, Mr – Bucky. This is quite revolutionary, and it would be our honor to help welcome you to SHIELD's ranks in any small way we can – now, I won't say there aren't risks – "

"Let's do it," he interrupts her, pointedly.

"But the risks, Bucky – you must know – "

He can't look at Steve, or look at any of them and their keen, hopeful faces. He looks at his arm, at the faint traces of his star he can see from this angle. "They can't be worse than this."

Bucky walks ahead of Steve after they leave, and Steve doggedly follows him ( _'til the end_ flickers through his mind) to his barracks. Bucky strips off his shirt and lies down, while Steve lingers, before finally sitting on the bed.

"You don't have to do it," Steve says, quietly.

"Hydra changed me. I'm a weapon now," Bucky retorts, tone flat. "You changed me. I'm a weapon for different people, better people. But you won't let me be used, so I'll do what I have to enter the war."

Steve is silent, his back to Bucky, but Bucky doesn't care what stricken look must be on his face right now. "You're not just a weapon." He makes an annoyed sound when Bucky scoffs. "You're not. You never were, and you aren't now."

"Let's not," Bucky says, dryly.

"Fine," Steve says sharply. "What if you – " He can't even make himself say it.

"You'd rather have me live forever as your not-completely-trusty stay-at-home sidekick?" Bucky says in his best dry, cutting tone.

"That's unfair and you know it," Steve snaps.

"I'd rather die than not be able to make good for all my wrongs," Bucky fires back. "So we're going to do it. Besides, none of these so far have been miracle cures or miracle poisons. I'll probably just have a headache after."

Steve sighs, pained, and turns back to Bucky; all the guilt hits him at once from the look on Steve's face, like he can barely stand to think of any of this. "Yeah," he says. "You're right. I'll be there tomorrow morning."

Bucky averts his gaze, then. The words, the actions going through his head would do no good right now. Knowing there are mistakes, and regretting you can't make them; that's how you know you're the real thing. "Thanks."

* * *

They feed Bucky their particular cocktail of Reefer Madness drugs, not for the first time, and put another sci-fi device on his head. Dr. Cora very carefully makes absolutely sure he's all right going into the tank, not unlike the chamber he slept in as the Soldier, but he really doesn't mind. Sensory deprivation, so far, has been the best way to approach all the awful shit Hydra crammed into his head. Besides, the darkness that took over once the chamber went cold is still a comforting memory from being the Soldier, even though they seem to find him saying that more than a little depressing. Either way, it's true.

"Cora, would you please get me a cup of tea, this is going to be a long – what do you mean the microphone's on? Blast – hello, Mr. Barnes, can you hear me?"

Huh, it's Fitz. Bucky can hear, still. There isn't much to listen for in the tank itself. "Yes," he answers, warily.

"Nine seconds after I finish this sentence you'll slip into a suggestible state, we will get a baseline scan of your brain, then trigger what remains of your programming, scanning the neuroplastic landscape every second after to make note of what's changed and what we might change back. You'll be awake by dinner for certain!"

Bucky can't keep his eyelids open. "But it's 0800."

"Exactly," Fitz says merrily. "Good morning, Mr. Barnes, or should I say g – "

He wakes what feels like shortly thereafter (but never is) with Drs. Fitz and Cora smiling mostly worriedly down at him. "How are you feeling, Bucky?" she asks, gently.

"Knew I'd have a headache," he mumbles, but smiles a little, and they look relieved. "Steve," he realizes. "Where's..."

"He's finishing up a strategy meeting. Said he would be here to see you as soon as he could," Dr. Cora assures him.

Of course. "They could've waited for me." Bucky ignores the look that crosses Dr. Cora's face; he was joking, anyway. A little. "What's the prognosis, docs?"

"It's a complex problem, you see," Fitz starts, fixing his monocle, "because you were born in a time long before mapping the neural cortex was a simple task and often done, so we might have been able to restore you to a point similar to before all this unpleasantness... if we had the information. But we don't, and it's vexing as hell, forgive my language."

Bucky tries not to smirk at Cora's small, fond eyeroll at Fitz, then she smiles gently at him. "We did what we could with what information we had. Our priority at this point is to preserve what of your personal memories we could. This treatment could be done again, Bucky, if your symptoms continue to persist and interfere with your life in harmful ways."

He looks at her expression, though; he sees the sadness in her smile. "But I'd lose..." _New York. Flossie's rare snort of laughter, Millie's nose scrunching up when he intimidates a boy away from her. Telling Bobby off for starting fights. The Commandos, the newsreel, the offputting smell of a recruiting office. Perfume and powder and rose-scented soap on a girl's skin._ All that. Things he couldn't ever bring back or experience again. "Can't just zap the bad ones, can you?"

"No," Fitz says, plainly. "We would have if we could."

There's an obvious, tense pause, then Bucky sits up; it's surprisingly easy. "Can I go?" he asks them.

"You might want to stay for – " Dr. Cora starts.

"No. Go, it's perfectly fine," Fitz promises him, and Cora glares, so Bucky chooses to leave before they get into one of their passive-aggressive fights over it. He walks the halls for ten minutes, aimlessly, not sure where he can retreat to, and finally runs into Steve leaving the strategy meeting.

"Buck," he says, surprised, and hauls him into a close hug. "Oh, God, I wasn't sure – they were supposed to text me, did they forget?"

"I basically just woke up, and now they're writing everything up, probably," Bucky says, with as casual an air as he can manage. "This is why they can't work as real doctors ever. Look, I'm fine. Hundred percent."

"Did the docs say that?" Steve asks dryly.

"Might as well have. Come on, I have an idea for another cartoon for you to draw, let's get out of here."

"Yeah, definite – "

" _Finally_ ," Stark exclaims, in great dramatic tones, as Rhodes exits the strategy meeting. Apparently everyone who hadn't noticed he was there needed particular reminding just now, but Bucky grins for a second in spite of everything. At least someone's having fun. "Have they got hookers and blow in there? Did Fury install a stripper pole?"

"Not sure that SHIELD keeps stripper poles lying around for special occasions," Rhodes says without missing a beat, "but if we're here for your birthday I'll look into it."

"Best friend," Stark declares of him.

"I'm still not over this," Steve says in an undertone to Bucky. "Six months, and he's... so over the top."

"It's an act," Bucky says, nonchalantly watching Stark walk away.

"Yeah, but it's an act that's not working," Steve points out, and goes silent. Then Bucky looks back at him to see his eyebrows raised. "Is it?"

Bucky pauses. "Is what?" he asks, in his best oblivious tone.

"I know you better than you do," Steve says, which Bucky has to concede with a shrug, and they hurriedly start heading towards the barracks. He hushes his voice. " _Stark_? Really?"

Easy enough not to answer that and get an answer to his own question. "Would that be a problem?"

Steve sighs – he was expecting that, obviously. "It's not like that."

"I know." Bucky smiles, a little wan, and looks to Steve, trying to catch his gaze. "Cool it, I'd almost think you're the one it's working on."

Steve makes a face, and it's absolutely worth it. He hauls Bucky over with an arm over his shoulder, and they both laugh.

It's worth the lie, to feel whole again. (And he mostly does.)


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky has a hard time sleeping. There's no guarantee when he closes his eyes what he'll dream about or whether or not it'll be memories breaking through the programming or a confusing mix of imagined nightmares or those implanted in his head to keep him in line, as a Big Red Button to mash in case of emergencies like independent thought or violence against the wrong people.

It's easier to just not sleep, really.

Steve's been giving him space - and thank God for that - because at least the delusion is that he's improved a lot in the last half week or however long this eternity of bullshit he's endured since waking up actually has been. The upside is that Bucky doesn't have to feel like an asshole for lying or wish he could complain at Steve about how useless he feels and actually get through to him; the downside is he does both of those things anyway, except with Steve somewhere else actually doing something.

Natasha is a pain in the ass about all of it, all his questions about what they're doing about strategy, about whether or not he'll be cleared and able to fight alongside them, but in spite of all that he's grudgingly liking her more than ever.

"Shouldn't you be in the meetings or whatever?" he asks her one morning over breakfast, which they've just agreed to dismiss as a topic in and of itself, because Bucky has no frame of reference for what food tastes like these days.

She shrugs. "I had my say. We'll all have our say a little later. I'm not a soldier, I'm a spy, so I'm not the best person to ask, anyway."

"But you know Loki," Bucky points out. "And you're an Avenger."

"I don't think you get the Avenger thing. It's not a rank," Natasha says, toying with her eggs. "It's a shared battle scar."

"You lost a friend. A colleague." He sighs. "I know."

She pauses in the thoughtful gesture of her fork, then says, "I took your notebook to Fury."

Bucky can't even parse that at first. Then he can, because of course she would. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and looks at her, as expressionless as he can manage. "You did what?"

"I like how you apparently got information on the Loki business from people without breaking bones. It's a good sign," she says, in that offhanded mild tone that has at least three layers to it (including _I don't care what you think_ but also _please don't be too pissed off_ '). "Sneaky but not malicious. Your strategies look solid, even to a spy. Anyway, I figured at the very least it'd prove to top brass that your brain's working again."

"Why would you do that?" It was stupid to even start writing down his ideas. He didn't have enough information, enough detail, and he doesn't know for sure how much technology has actively changed things, especially military strategy and philosophy, beyond the things he's managed to voraciously read on the internet and in the database. "He's going to think I'm plotting against you or something."

"No, he really doesn't," Natasha says, a little amused. "They've kept a close eye on you. Outside interference is unlikely."

"What if I'm an active free agent?" Bucky returns, more than slightly tense.

"That would be too simple," she says, and eyes him far too knowingly. "The thing with you and Rogers is anything but simple."

It's not even worth a heavy sigh at that point. "That has nothing to do with anything."

"From how Dr. Browning speaks about your course of treatment, it sounds like it was pretty much 'Steve Rogers plus mad science equals Bucky Barnes again.'" Natasha taps her fingers on the table. "He matters to you. In a way that you can't fake."

"Could you fake it?" Bucky retorts, not even sure what he's getting at. Anything to not have to answer.

"I could," she answers without missing a beat. "You can't. You were at your weakest, at your least you, and you still knew him."

He's silent for a long moment, and he finds his thoughts not racing, just one thought clear in his head. "Have you had anyone like that?" he asks her. "Someone who could break through."

"No." He watches her. It's impossible to tell if she's lying, really, but he thinks it's probably the truth. "They got to me earlier than they got to you. The point is, Fury's considering it."

"Considering... my ideas?" That conversation feels ages ago now.

"Considering you," Natasha says, apparently cutting the bullshit. "That's all I know."

That stops Bucky cold. "...Agent Romanov," he says, his tone uncertain.

She chews her eggs and sends him a faux-inquiring look when she's swallowing. "Yes?" she prompts him.

"Thank you."

A smile flits across her face like a bird past a window, and it's great, and he smiles back, despite himself. He sticks his right hand out to her, and she shakes it, putting on a mock-serious expression. "Good luck, comrade," she bids him, in terse Russian.

He laughs, surprised, and she raises her eyebrows as he returns the gruff words and goes.

* * *

The strategy meeting is not what Bucky expects it to be. Based on the despairing expressions most of the SHIELD agents wear and the Avengers' total bewilderment and annoyance, he's going to assume that it's not just him and this is not generally how the average strategy meeting looks, especially considering there are way, way too many people there.

Thor - yeah, the god of thunder guy with the hammer, he doesn't believe it either - winds up talking over just about everyone without a microphone, which Natasha explains to him with a tone much more matter-of-fact than the situation's total nonsensicalness seems to ask for. ( _Loki's his brother. They come from another dimension. Thor's supposed to be king. So. It's all very Shakespearean._ )

All of that is not even nearly as weird as the part where Fury seems to have incorporated some of Bucky's strategies against Loki.

Bucky misses something, then Fury tells them to get their asses to bed on time tonight because 0700 is when they all go to war, and he exhales. Hewon't be going to war. Steve glances askance at him, and he puts on a faint smile.

If he can't be there to protect Steve, maybe at least his plans can be?

"You know," Steve says, in undertone enough, "I'm not ninety-five pounds anymore. I can protect myself. I fought off an alien. And a supernazi. And - "

"And you punched Hitler," Bucky says, dryly. "I remember."

"I'm just saying." Steve seems hesitant to touch him. Bucky is hesitant to let him. "I'll come back."

"You'd better," he resorts to, when his mind can't supply him anything but the urge to pull him close and not think of tomorrow at all. "Otherwise I'm taking that damn shield."

Steve grins a bit. "Natasha called dibs."

"Yeah, well, she can fight me for it."

"Rogers!" Stark calls, and Steve gives Bucky a look of good-natured weariness before he turns to go greet him. Obviously, Bucky follows, not needing an excuse for this kind of entertainment. Stark is so cheerful, how does he manage that? "I'm going to find some liquor," he says. Oh, that's how. "You two going to join us?"

"I'm not even sure I'm going to join us," Banner says.

"Me either," Rhodes says, smirking, "but you'd be surprised how persuasive he is."

This is getting harder to deny. And Steve knows it. No point, then; it's a whole new world by now, right? "So I hear," Bucky says, casually as he can manage.

"As I was saying," Stark says, and damn can the man smile. "Come on, I know you can't get drunk anymore, Cap, but it's worth a shot, so to speak - and anyway, you won't have a hangover. You," he says, rounding on Bucky, which shouldn't be a surprise but it is and he knows it, "I don't know about for sure but let's call it an experiment." Stark's eyebrows quirk up, and Bucky officially considers himself doomed, because this asshole's eyebrows are giving him all sorts of ideas. "An experiment! Science! Verification you are in fact the second of the Supersober Wonder Twins."

He has to interrupt, even though it seems like Stark's out of steam anyway. "Actually I could go for this," he says to an already worrying Steve, doing his best to restrain a grin.

And there's Steve's mildly terrified face. "Whoa, wait," he insists, "Dr. Cora said until you're, uh, stabilized, you should - "

Jesus, why is he so desperate? He feels like an idiot. "Yeah, but I am almost basically me," he points out, as flippantly as he dares for something this important.

Steve persists, though. "But what if something..." He's already accepted Bucky's answer, though; it's written all over his face, even before Bucky shrugs at him. "You're not listening to me."

He keeps Steve's gaze. "I may not remember a lot about our last campaign, but I remember that we treated each day like it was our last, including having a brew or six."

Bucky wishes he could be ashamed of himself for the expression he sends Steve's way, the wish he needs granted, but he's not. _Can't I just have one night, like before?_ Steve sighs, and speaks falteringly. " Fine. Fine, we'll be there. Where are you getting the liquor? They don't have any on base. Do they?" he asks, startled, when Bucky laughs.

"You are so naive for a captain," Barnes says dryly, and eyes him with amusement and more than a little affection.

Steve would look embarrassed if he looked up at all. "Whatever," he concludes. "You go... find a bathtub full of gin or something, I have to work out some last-minute strategy with Fury."

"How is this last minute? It's like twelve hours away," Stark says, while Steve gives Bucky his best be careful I swear to God face, which is the most ironic thing he can think of to get from Steve, really, and wanders away. "He's such an overachiever. Teacher's pet. Am I right?"

"Ha, you have no idea," Bucky says, flashing Tony one of his grins. "You need any help acquiring the booze?"

"Well we're in Turkey, so that might pose a problem," Banner cracks.

Stark talks to his robot thing or whatever in that great arrogant asshole drawl, which would be so fun to... no, Bucky really needs to snap out of this. "I can't believe what a damn showoff this guy is," he says to Rhodes. "Does he ever turn it off?"

"He sleeps," Rhodes concedes.

"Charm like this can't just be turned off," Stark answers him belatedly, and takes out what Bucky still can't believe is a phone. "Got it. Who's driving?"

Oh, he can't not laugh at that show of stupid technological advancement - that's already been topped multiple times, yeah, but it's still insane and amazing. Finding three liquor stores, in the middle of nowhere in the Middle East, in under a minute. "The twenty-first century," Bucky says, shaking his head. "I thought your dad was full of shit."

"He was," Stark says blithely. "I never did get that flying car. Shall we?"

Booze, flirting, being stupid enough to annoy Steve, who is more interested in the righting of wrongs and bringing justice to bullies; it's enough like before, like New York, to assure him that he's fine. He's fine. He's Bucky Barnes.

The thought brings a smile to his face. The self-conscious glance Stark sends him turns it to a smirk.

This could be a good night, and that's good enough news to him.

* * *

They get some beer, they settle in at the mess, and Bucky finds he really likes these guys, even the ones who he isn't somewhat accidentally flirting with all the time.

( _"Accidentally," you're so full of shit_ , Steve said on their walk there. _But whatever works for you, Buck._ It was the first time he'd heard the nickname in a day or two, and it felt like forever. He grinned.)

The point is, he can't help himself, and why should he? It's a new century, and there's something called Don't Ask Don't Tell, apparently, and marriage equality, whatever that means. There are more important topics right now.

"How," Bucky says, pointing the lip of his beer bottle at him in something resembling accusation, "are you a New Yorker without opinions on baseball?"

"Because he doesn't have opinions on things that don't involve him," Rhodes explains in a deadpan. "It might be annoying but at least it means he doesn't argue everything possible to death."

"No, it's not that," Tony insists. "It's because the Yankees jumped the shark like fifteen years ago."

The Yankees. Bucky feels like he's been hit by a two-by-four, or probably how that would have felt back when Hitler was alive, really. "The Yankees?" he repeats slowly.

Tony sighs heavily. "The Yankees. Look, the Dodgers aren't an option anymore and the Mets, seriously - "

"What do sharks have to do with anything?" Bucky persists, and glances to Rhodes wearily in lieu of gesturing for another beer.

"It's a phrase. Look, baseball is not a big thing anymore," Tony starts, and Bucky makes an indignant sound, which thankfully he manages to stifle after Steve almost laughs in his face.

"Speak for yourself," Rhodes is saying. "I love me some baseball."

"That's because you're boring," Tony informs him.

Bucky cuts in, then. "I will punch you," he tells Tony, barely restraining a smirk into a grin.

Somehow Tony's prepared for that. "Wouldn't be fair. At least let me put on my digs. You're all supersoldier or something. Wouldn't be even."

Touchy subject tonight. But Bucky deals. "Yeah, or something," he returns, and drinks. "Would love to see how you fight without the robot thing's help."

Tony shrugs. "It doesn't really help me besides being metal and having jets on my feet and blasters in my hands. But yeah, suit off, not as impressive," he almost admits.

Rhodes leans in to add helpfully, "It's actually sort of embarrassing to watch."

"It is not," Tony protests, looking actually a little wounded.

Rhodes looks at him plainly. "You rely almost entirely on gadgets."

"So does Batman," Bruce chimes in. "As long as they work."

"Which they do," Tony says, cheering up. "Glad we cleared that up."

No, this is too good, and Steve is even kicking him a little. Now he has someone to blame. Perfect. "You should spar, though," Bucky presses. "Get used to it. You're a decent fighter but I could show you some things."

Tony raises his eyebrows. Somehow, Bucky doesn't let his expression change. "Like what exactly?"

"You have weak spots," Steve agrees, helpfully.

"Everyone has weak spots. Achilles had weak spots," Tony points out, a little defensive.

"Oh, no, not the classics," Bruce deadpans, still nursing his first drink. "Cool down, let's not get defensive. Or offensive. It's worth a shot, right, Stark? Call it a preliminary assessment."

"Fine. Only one of you at a time at first, I'm not into Cold War reenactments." Tony puts his hands up. "Who wants to take me first?"

"He does," Steve says instantly, and Bucky elbows him, but nods. "I do," he confirms.

"Looking forward to hearing your, uh, input. Anyone want to play beer pong?" Tony suggests in a swift change of topic.

"No idea what that is but I'm in," Bucky says, raising his hand. Steve sighs at him, which is the best part. It's only then that it occurs to him that he might be getting slightly drunk, or worse. But he's enjoying it. That's good, right? The Soldier never enjoyed anything.

Fuck, he didn't want to think about that. There's a noise in his head, now that he's willing to acknowledge it. Shit, fuck. He needs some air.

"Hardly fair," Bruce is saying. "You're not getting drunk."

"I'm not?" Bucky returns, and gathers up the empty beer bottles for an excuse. "'Supposed to 'recycle' or whatever. One second. Don't start without me."

He knows his way around the base by now too well, so he manages to find a place near a damn recycle bin that he can also sit by and breathe. Amazingly, Steve hasn't followed him, and he's incredibly grateful for that, because eventually he's going to have to learn how to do this on his own, especially if Steve -

Yeah, no, he can't think about that.

What's happening back there - all this planning and work, the aims and the struggle - it's all missions, isn't it? That's what the noise in his head is saying, that's what he's hearing in every word they're all saying. _Prepare. Learn. Know your enemy. The mission. The mission is paramount. Complete your mission. You will be briefed._

It's too hot, all of the sudden. He can't go to the mess. He retreats to the bathroom, runs the water, gets it as cold as he can, and presses it into his face again and again, eyes barely open enough to see the slate gray of the counter, and it's the only thing that comforts him. He's calm - calmer than he's ever been, than he ever remembers being. He takes a deep breath, looks into the mirror, and fixes a piece of hair before leaving.

"Barnes," Natasha calls, as he's heading back towards the mess, and he hesitates to turn back to her, but knows he has to, so does. There she is, with Barton. "Thor's in the mess, apparently. At your little party, which Fury's thrilled about, in case you're wondering, but he figures he's got the Captain there supervising anyway so you guys won't burn the place down. You mind telling him we're looking for him? He has some guests."

"Hi," a short girl with dark hair and big glasses says, peeking out from behind Barton. "We're here! Tell him we're here. He'll run. Well, he'll run to _her_."

"Darcy," another woman hisses at her, from where she's slinking down behind Natasha. When she straightens, he gets a good look at her - clearly mousy - and this is not how Bucky pictured Thor's scientist girl. "...Hi," she offers to Bucky.

Bucky pauses. "Hi," he says to them.

"This is Dr. Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, just, tell him they're here? He'll come," Barton says, with just a tinge of amusement.

"Will do," he affirms.

"Can I go to the party?" Darcy asks Natasha in an undertone. "It sounds awesome. Like, Iron Man! Thor! Captain America! Guy with a metal arm who I've never even heard of! Man, what kind of sweepstakes do you have to win to get one of those?"

Bucky sighs and strides to the mess, his mood not all that great until he hears Tony Stark rambling on about dicks, with accompanying gestures. Then he looks back around and it's all even better. "Go on," he prompts Tony.

"Huge," Tony finishes his sentence, with some relish. "No doubt in my mind. Or anyone else's. Never met a guy so willing to show it off."

"At least he has the decency to show off the real deal," Rhodes deadpans. "You know, not with cars, or inventions, or – "

Bucky walks over by Steve, still a little dazed from the whole ordeal, and interrupts the sarcasm when he comes back to himself after a touch from Steve's hand. "Right," he realizes, and turns to Thor. "Uh. Barton and Romanov are looking for you. It's your, uh. Girl. The." He pauses, and hopes that this alien in particular isn't educated enough on human etiquette to be pissed off at him for not knowing how to describe his girlfriend, then just goes on. "The scientist? And some weird girl with glasses."

"Jane," Thor cuts him off, grabs a second and a third bottle of beer, and goes. Tony mouths indignantly but doesn't get his words out in time. "That... those... were my beers," he complains.

Shit. Steve's touch usually grounds him. Why isn't it working? Why is this even happening? "Are we just going to sit here and drink?" He paces, and looks to Steve, who watches him with guarded concern. "Because as much fun as it is to – talk shit and reminisce about things half of us don't know about or remember..."

"What are you suggesting?" Bruce finally cuts in.

"A warm-up," Steve cuts in; Bucky looks at him, and Steve's face could not more clearly say I trust you. You can do this. "We used to have punching bags. Or I did, anyway. Guess SHIELD thought it was too much to haul. We get bored."

"How is this a warm-up, we're both drinking, and – I'm not a punching bag," Tony belatedly notes in vague and sort of endearing annoyance. Rhodes snickers. "I'm not!"

This could help. Steve trusts him. So he trusts himself. "Prove it," Bucky says, simply.

He can see the interest and anxieties so much like his own in Tony's eyes as he stands. "Done," he says, and shakes Bucky's right hand once again, sizing him up calmly. "Where?"

"I would suggest not here," Bruce speaks up. "If you get your ass handed to you, it might make, uh, a mess. In the mess."

"I'm not going to get my ass handed to me. I'm going to get my ass graciously returned to me," Tony tells Bruce, and glances at Bucky. "Well?"

If it's up to him, then... "Follow me," Bucky says, more confidently than he feels. He goes, knowing (hoping) that Steve looks after him in nothing less than faith and trust, and that he wasn't seeing what he wanted to see when he looked into Steve's face.

* * *

It's all a matter of keeping his grip. Once they're just one hallway on the way to the hangar, Bucky's realized this was a stupid idea, and he can't handle this, or he's going to have a hell of a time handling it. Stark's following him like a damn half-drunk idiot and it's both mortifying and terrifying to think of losing control and hurting him _while knowing better_.

 _Don't come back. Please._ He's praying to the Soldier for mercy, now, mercy for having been stupid and dropping his vigilance for even a minute. _I want to stay._

But that's not how it works, does it?

The world is sort of crisping at the edges, which makes no sense at all but is the perfect description, and then he vaguely recognizes a voice and a touch and lashes out instinctively.

No, the Soldier can hear, just faintly, as he hauls the man from SHIELD up to choke him. It reminds him of something else. Something hurts , in his skull and in his chest, and he has to force it back as the man starts to shout at him, words and names he doesn't understand or want to hear. He shoves the man against the wall, choking him with his left hand, desperate for the man to die and for this to be over so he can escape, and then his arm fails.

It falls. It's dead, and he can't move it.

"I can't," he manages, and tries again, and again, and again. It's incredibly distressing, and the pain in his chest gets worse with each attempt. "Why can't I - "

"You have to let me fix it," the SHIELD agent he was choking says from the floor, and crawls to his feet. "I can make your arm better. Bucky." He shakes his head at that, but the SHIELD agent presses him. "Let's go talk to Steve."

"I can't – " His head is going to explode. _Steve. Bucky. Buck. Who the hell is Bucky?_ He groans. "I remember," he grits out. It's too real, too much, and he has to kill him, but he can't, because he's _real now_ , and, _fuck_. What is this no man's land he's trapped in and why? "Him. You. Why..."

"Because you're getting better," the SHIELD agent insists, and he looks at him, and it feels like something jumps in his chest, through the ache, something good, and it's so out of nowhere he can't even understand it. "And you jumped, to get away from them." _Jump._ He remembers that. The snow swirling... he's still talking. "You broke their hold on you and you jumped, you risked it all, and now you're back, with people who actually give a shit about you and won't use you as a weapon."

The SHIELD agent is standing there, and it just... goes. He's cold, so cold, but the other option is scarier. "Where's Steve?" he asks.

"This way."

He follows the SHIELD agent, and they find Steve and some others after a few moments of walking in silence. He can't decide if he wants to hide from Steve or run to him, and he avoids everyone's gazes and all the talking until Steve comes to him, touches his face, and pulls his gaze up to him. "Bucky," he tries. "Bucky, man. Are you there? Come back."

"It's - it's not working," he says, doing his best to hide the terror in his voice, and holds onto Steve.

"It will," Steve tells him, and he knows he can believe it. "Come on. Come with me."

The lab is, at least, familiar, and he comes back to himself very slowly, very painfully, and with more than a little self-loathing. But Steve doesn't leave his side, and, when Bucky's facefirst in Steve's shoulder, shaking, the doctors give them time alone. He doesn't break down, at least at first, then Steve says, almost inaudibly, "I'm sorry."

Christ. "It's not your fault."

"It's not yours, either." Bucky wants to argue, but Steve goes on. "I wanted you to be better. I wanted you to - I want you to be better just as much as you do."

"I know that," he mumbles.

"You're not just a weapon. I wasn't just a mission. And you snapped me out of it - back in '41 - and I wanted to do the same, Buck. You deserve something happy. Something normal."

Bucky smiles, a little sardonically. "I'm not ready for normal yet, obviously."

"We'll figure it out," Steve concludes, presses a kiss to his forehead, and wipes his face. "You and me."

"The only damn people I need on this base, really," Bucky says, "and I could give or take the Soldier."

"That guy can go to hell," Steve agrees dryly, trying a smile when Bucky laughs, embarrassed.

He doesn't want to sleep. But he has to. There's farewells he has to make before the troops go to war.

* * *

Bucky doesn't want to move, even though his hair is in his eyes. Steve's sleeping in the chair beside him, leaning on his lab cot with his hand on top of Bucky's loosely restrained ones. All he can think as he looks into Steve's face is if he moves Steve will wake up, leave, and everything will change. Right now, it's just him and his self-hatred, which is easier than the alternative. He doesn't know if he can deal with sending Steve off to war with all that pointless guilt on his shoulders, especially if he risks not getting him back.

Eventually Fitz stirs from where he's been asleep on the couch stowed in the back of the lab, and terrifyingly Dr. Cora opens the lab door almost simultaneously. "How do you do that?" he whispers in her direction. "Are your watches synced or something?"

"Something like that," Dr. Cora says, shrugging, and goes through the security protocols. "How are you doing this morning, Bucky?"

"I'm fine. What time is it?" he asks, urgently.

"It's 0600. Are you being honest with me?"

He sighs. "If I'm lying to you it's probably a good sign. We should wake Steve up."

"He has another hour, Bucky." Dr. Cora frowns at him. "You're..."

"Whatever," Bucky says, voice strained. _Look at what you did._ Steve's exhausted, about to risk his life, and it's all on him. At least if he wakes him, he can get it over with. He nudges Steve with his right hand. "Steve."

"Mngh," Steve manages, then looks up, a sleepy smile dawning on his face as he does. "Hey, Buck."

"Hey," Bucky says, and returns the smile, though it aches. "You planning on training any today, or just saving all that energy to kick Loki's ass?"

"Could use a warm-up. I hate to say it but the guy's a heavyweight." Steve is appraising him, and Bucky would feel self-conscious if he weren't apparently so damn happy.

"That comes with being immortal, I guess. Not that we'd know from experience." Bucky pauses. "Probably."

"I suggest we not test that?" Dr. Cora interrupts, with only slightly dry archness.

"Do you want to come with me?" Steve asks him. Bucky smiles in answer, and Steve turns back to Dr. Cora. "Is he clear to go to the gym?"

"Ah," Dr. Cora says uncertainly, and Bucky looks up at her, insecure. "I think it'd be best if he avoids combat of any sort, for now. But we'll release him from restraints so long as he's accompanied."

"Quite right," Fitz chimes in, out of nowhere.

"Thank you, Fitz," Dr. Cora says, and sighs, going for the keys on her belt to free Bucky from the handcuffs. " _Be responsible_ ," she adds, chiding, and fixes his hair, all maternal.

"We'll definitely try," Bucky promises her, "but this one's born trouble." He prods Steve in the shoulder. "Let's go. I'll be right back," he adds to Dr. Cora, who's eyeing him with concern.

Steve smiles broadly, and gives Bucky a hand off the cot. They head towards the gym, at first in comfortable silence, then Steve says, "Where are you actually heading?"

"What's that supposed to mean? Fine, I'm going to see Romanov," Bucky says without missing a beat, then makes a face when Steve looks at him frankly. "And Stark. What, I could have killed the guy, he deserves an apology."

"Not that I disagree, but _you_ didn't do that," Steve reminds him firmly.

"By negligence if not by whatever," Bucky says, impatiently. "He won't be awake, though. Let's just train."

"You sure?"

"I won't punch any real people. It'll be fine. You do your thing. Maybe I'll feel a little less shitty then."

A half hour of punching the newest metal arm-compliant punching bag that Fitz whipped up a day or two ago out of mixed boredom and genuine concern gets Bucky a little winded and feeling a little less awful, which is good considering he knows he's going to feel like a complete asshole once he sees Tony all bruised and shit.

Steve approaches Bucky as he rests his head against the gravity-reinforced punching bag, and says, "I should go."

"Yeah," Bucky confirms.

"I'll see you later, Buck."

He doesn't even want to think about it. He's done this before, and he hates it. He turns around, and pulls Steve into a tight hug, holding him close to remember everything about him, or at least try, considering his sieve of a head. "Steve - "

"Don't," Steve interrupts him instantly.

Bucky rethinks it, then. "We're gonna make a great team again," he says, instead.

"You know it." Steve pulls back from the embrace, and Bucky swallows, tensing his left fist in nervousness. Steve eyes it. "It'll be fine," he assures him.

"I should go," Bucky says by way of answer, with a small nod, and Steve smiles and nods.

Stark's in his own little room. Lab. Room-slash-lab. It's perfectly him, not that Bucky knows him really well. Tony's putting on his armor, all bandaged and wounded still, and he seriously considers retreating.

Then Tony's body language changes; he knows Bucky's there. There's no point going now, so he makes himself speak. "I wanted to apologize."

"Yeah, well," Tony says casually, apparently keeping busy with... something? "We were probably pushing you too hard anyway."

There's no describing it to them, is there? "I know," he says, a little annoyed, but doing his best to stifle it. "But I – it gets to me. Knowing that all of that's still... part of me. Probably always will be. That I could just turn on people like that. I'm sorry that it – that I let it out on you."

Tony's frozen there, it's obvious, and Bucky can't decide whether he wants to go and break through or just keep the distance between them a no man's land. "Didn't hold it against you," he insists to Bucky, like it's nothing. "Now we know, right? Booze us supersoldier plus brainwashing plus cybernetic arm equals..."

Now he's doing something. Or pretending to do something. It's not like Bucky would know the difference, but the no man's land doesn't seem as daunting now; he approaches Tony. "What are you doing?" he asks, carefully.

Tony sighs, and looks up at him. "Okay, yeah," he concedes - what he's conceding, who knows. "Look, it's not that big a deal. Most people want to kill me when they meet me, but they don't get as good a chance as that."

This guy. Bucky moves closer to him, this guy he barely knows. That's the weird thing, who is this guy , this guy who's one of the first new things that's made sense, that's worked , up so close, not distant behind a mental scope of fear and pessimism? "You think you're an asshole," he finds himself saying to Tony, restraining his right hand from touching him. "But you're a hero. Just like the rest of them."

"The rest of _us_ ," Tony returns instantly, firmly. "And don't forget it."

That floors him. He wouldn't have expected that, ever, and knows - "I haven't earned that," he protests. "Not yet. Not after – "

Tony cuts him off, somehow, with raised eyebrows and sentiment he couldn't have imagined from the guy. "Tell that to the hordes of fanboys collecting Howling Commandos cards and reading about you in history book blurbs," he starts, and he doesn't stop. "And the people across Europe – the world – whose lives you saved by battling Hydra. And that's what today is – finishing what you started. It doesn't matter what you did, it matters what you do."

 _But I could have killed you._ The last thing he expected was forgiveness, nonetheless faith. Bucky can only look at him for a moment, astounded, grateful, all of it, and there's barely any point in fighting it. He steps forward, kisses _Tony fucking Stark_ , because this arrogant asshole is basically fantastic and everyone but Bucky is about to go to war, and this could be his last shot. Tony doesn't hesitate, and maybe it's the fear and the overwhelming nature of the kindness from the least likely source, but as they're kissing again and again Bucky's heart is all mess-plates off-beat clatter again - then Stark pulls away. "Aah," he manages, "agh, not that I'm not enjoying this, just, suiting up, briefing – "

Bucky releases a shaky breath and manages a faint smile, which turns to a smirk despite his best efforts. This is different than anything before the Soldier, before the fall. This is _his life_ , all his, not memories or fragmented consequences of them.

"Don't die out there," he says, then. "I was just starting to like you."

On his way back to the lab, he runs into Natasha, and she has enough time to instinctively kick out his knee, which he doesn't need for this anyway, before he sweeps her into a tight hug.

"Let me go or I'll kill you," she says plainly.

"You can't die either," he tells her, and puts her down.

"I wasn't planning on it."

The non-smile she wears warms him, and lets him release a breath on his way to Drs. Browning and Fitz.

They have their battle. He has his.

* * *

They win. Thor leaves with Loki in handcuffs (and a muzzle, which is probably for the best) for the other dimension or whatever with a light show so seriously over the top that Bucky is not entirely sure he's not being pranked. The tesseract's still at large, but one thing at a time, Fury says, or at least one damn major offensive a day if they can help it.

Steve spends the day after with him, almost exclusively, the door of his room shut to keep the sound of the cleanup and moving out well out of way. The Avengers have earned their rest, and Bucky doesn't know what might have happened to his head if any of them hadn't come back. Apparently they're growing on him.

He's braiding Bucky's hair, deftly with occasional pauses, as they lie there in silence. "I was thinking," he starts.

"Yeah," Bucky prompts him, meeting his gaze.

"I don't know what we were," Steve says, focusing on the movements of his fingers. "Back then. You and me."

He releases a slow breath at that. "Neither do I," he admits.

"Or what we are now," Steve goes on.

"Yeah."

There's a long silence, where he finishes the braid and tucks it behind Bucky's ear. It's so stupid that he has to smile, and Steve grins a little at that, but it fades. "It doesn't matter to me," he admits.

"What doesn't?" Bucky needs to hear it, the actual words, even though he knows, or he thinks he knows.

"What we were. What we are. As long as _we_ are, Buck."

This is really getting to him and he can't even put how or why to words, fuck. "Still trying to set me up with Stark? Thought you didn't like the guy," he says blithely.

Steve can't help but crack a smile. "He's a good guy. I want you to do what you want to do."

"What about you?" Jesus Christ, he just said that out loud. Bucky's throat practically closes.

His smile holds, which is sadder than the usual fading, because he's holding back again. "I'll manage."

"Steve," he presses.

"We don't need that," Steve interrupts him, insistent. "We're best friends, we have a second chance, and just - all that fooling around, who cares, okay?"

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, but there's still a sadness in Steve's face. "You're not really selling me on this, y'know."

"Things are weird," he points out. "And I have no idea what's going to happen next. None of us do."

Bucky tries a smile on, grinning when Steve returns it. "Then we'll just go with it," he says.

"Yeah," Steve agrees, looking a hell of a lot more reassured, and Bucky kisses him fondly, once and again. The kisses aren't the end of something, or the beginning of something, really; it's more like a little bit of both.

You learn, living more lifetimes and burning through more memory banks than a person should, that generally, that's how things are.

* * *

The truth is it's actually really surreal. Since Bucky's technically a patient and Tony's an independent contractor, SHIELD really, really doesn't seem to care what they're doing or saying to each other, and no one seems to even think twice about the homosexuality, really.

2012\. He could learn to live with this.

Bucky doesn't have to know Tony all that well - which is good, because he doesn't - to know he's keeping a secret. The guy is under a tremendous amount of pressure, probably all coming from inside his own head, and it's obvious. He keeps stealing glances, checking on Bucky, making comments and taking moments with him, but he won't get close, and it reminds him too much of his own caution when it came to - comes to - Steve.

 _Things aren't simple_ , Steve reminded him that night. _When have they ever been simple?_

Honestly he's not sure how he'd handle simple.

Still, he feels bad for Tony. The guy's struggling, possibly the worst case of shell-shock he's ever seen, intense guilt or self-loathing, both, or something else entirely, God knows what. He stops by Tony's lab-slash-room and leans inside. "Hey Stark," he says, casually, "ditch the goggles, we're taking a walk."

"Can't hear you, doing science," Tony calls back to him.

"You can definitely hear me, take a break. Besides, you're supposed to be packing, remember?"

Tony looks up from the robot he's working on, a streak of grease on his face and a few bandaged cuts remaining. "I am working on packing. How do I pack without my moving crew?"

"You're seriously going to use the robots to pack your stuff," Bucky says, faintly amused. "You don't need to use the robots to pack your stuff, you know."

"They like to feel useful," Tony answers without missing a beat. "You can come in if you want to help."

"I don't know how much help I can be - "

"Yeah, yeah, everyone says that. I'm not going to let you do anything important, don't worry." He taps the leg of the robot. "Have I introduced you?"

This is genuinely baffling. "...To who?" he asks.

"This is DUM-E," Tony says, tapping the robot next to him whose leg he's working on, then points at one across the room. "That's Butterfingers. And You. Not you," he clarifies, looking back to Bucky, "that one." He points, demonstratively, to another robot. "I call him You."

"This is some Who's On First thing, isn't it?" Bucky asks after a moment of admittedly amusing confusion.

"Look, I've had these SOBs since I was a kid, they're great, but I was dumb and the names stuck," Tony says plainly. "And I never said that, if anyone asks you. Even - " He pauses, markedly, and cringes. "Agh."

There's a pause that isn't long but is deeply awkward anyway. "You were building these when you were a kid," Bucky repeats, taking another look at them.

"Yeah. Uh. DUM-E's the oldest." Wow. It looks like Bucky is getting the rare chance to see an embarrassed Tony Stark. "He needs work, sometimes, but that happens when you get older. Not that supersoldiers would know."

"Hey." He raises his left arm. "I'll need to get maintenance done here and there."

"Ha. I think you're good on that front," Tony says dryly. "Have Fitz and Cora filed the adoption papers yet?"

It's his turn to be embarrassed. "Yeah, well. Probably would have taken this place down without them, I think it's just self-preservation that they helped me."

"Bullshit," Tony says, cheerfully. "Every once in a while, SHIELD can be the good guys. Sometimes, they're not."

"Yeah, it's never that clear-cut," Bucky agrees, not quite looking at him.

There's another pause, and when he looks up at Tony, he's grinning. "Is that a braid?" he checks. "Right there?"

"...No," Bucky tries.

"Yes," Tony says, leaning in, and reaching out to touch it. "Yes, yes, it is."

"Maybe it is," Bucky concedes, genuinely embarrassed now. "Apparently it's practically an impulse if you spend enough time around me."

"We will absolutely need to test this theory with Hawkeye," Tony says, mock-seriously, and smirks at him, just for a second. It breaks his concentration and his willpower, that quick flicker of interest and _I dare you,_ and Bucky leans across the robot's leg with his left arm and pulls Tony into a firm kiss with the right. With each kiss, he can sense Tony's satisfaction, the ego of it, his desperate attempts to play it cool as well; he wishes he didn't love every second of all of it, but he kind of does.

They break for a moment, still close, and Bucky goes for another kiss, but Tony just slightly turns away. "You're distracting me," he deadpans quietly.

"You're easily distracted," Bucky returns, and leans back, unable to keep from a small laugh when Tony huffs in indignation, feigned or not. "What? Just removing a distraction."

"Distractions are good. I'm a big fan of distractions," Tony promises.

He smiles innocently back. "You're also a big fan of robots."

Tony heaves a long-suffering sigh at that and puts down his tools, all put-out. "Barnes, I would not have pegged you for a tease."

"Yeah, well." Bucky leans over to touch Tony's face, to touch one of the bruises he'd put there. "I won't tease you for long."

Tony's eyebrows shoot up, and Bucky presses a chaste kiss to his lips before standing. "See you," he says to Stark.

"You're an asshole," Tony calls glibly after him after a dumbstruck pause.

"So are you," he returns, and grins to himself as he leaves.

* * *

They're on their way home now, thank God. The Avengers (or human ones, he supposes), and Bucky, for some reason, get first class, or whatever it's called - the name doesn't matter, it's incredible. Really he's stuck on that this is actually a plane, because it looks like a cocktail lounge. He can't complain, even if it is close quarters, especially with people who have issues with personal space or boundaries.

Like Tony. Who might have been more manageable if Rhodes had been able to come along, but he couldn't, so they're stuck with this.

"I don't care how long the flight is," Barton says patiently to Tony, "I'm not braiding his hair."

Tony gestures broadly at Bucky like a USO girl to the main act. He tries to keep a straight face, and pushes his hair back in an attempt at a vain girl's gesture. "See? There's so much of it," Tony goes on. "Besides, you totally seem like the type to have, like, four sisters. Am I right? Tough guy, house full of women."

Barton doesn't answer, and turns to Natasha. "When did this become a thing?" he asks, jabbing a thumb at him and Tony.

Natasha sends Bucky a look packed with such intense amusement it's enough to make him bite back a smile in return. "Elephant in the room time?" she asks, with the same warm tone obvious in her face, and Bucky shrugs at her, offhanded but sort of grinning. "About six months now, obviously."

"Har har," Bruce says in his usual perfect deadpan, from behind his book. "Tony Stark has flings, film at eleven."

"Hey," Tony says, feigning annoyance, "that's an absolutely fair assessment, how dare you say that?"

"He says that but I think he's actually pretty old-fashioned," Bucky says casually.

"Buck," Steve starts, already trying not to laugh. "C'mon - "

Tony sits down next to him again, nudging him. "I'll take the bait. How am I old-fashioned? How are you going to call me old-fashioned?"

"He'd know," Natasha reminds him.

"It's a point," Barton concedes.

"You're like one of those fussy difficult heiresses that Katharine Hepburn plays," Bucky says, easily, without really thinking, "all, you know. Confident and cynical and dry but with a heart of gold underneath it all. You're going to tell me that's a common thing these days?"

There's the slightest pause, then Natasha clears her throat with dignity too great to be real, Steve, Bruce, and Barton burst out laughing, and that's right about when Bucky presses his face into his hands and cringes. Tony elbows him, but unfortunately hasn't really thought that through, rams his elbow into Bucky's left arm, and rubs at it, swearing.

"I'm never going to be able to unsee it," Bruce admits.

"Why would you want to?" Natasha asks rhetorically.

"Sorry," Bucky hisses to Tony.

"Yeah, uh, no big deal, I just know this is going to make it back to Rhodey somehow and I'll have to find even better dirt on him, but that's a good time, anyway," Tony says, and for the first time since he let his mouth run, Bucky looks at him, really; oh my god, is he blushing? "No. No," he warns Bucky, and he knows he has to look amused now too at how mortified Tony looks. "You, don't start."

"Not a word," he says simply, quietly enough for only Tony to hear, and leans back in the incredibly comfortable airplane chair. "Besides. I'll make it up to you."

That shuts him up, in the best possible way. It is completely worth it to know, without looking, that Stark is absolutely wrapped around his finger, even after something that stupid.

* * *

Steve walks beside him as they head down the hallway to the ICU.

Hospitals are different now, too. No surprise there.

They say - whoever "they" are - that it's best to leave the past behind. Bucky knows he made the right choice when he risked it all to keep it alongside him, though, when he sees his little sister, all grown and then all small again, withered, but recognizable in spite of it all, with her untamed hair and bright and fresh flowers all across her bedside table in her favorite colors. She's hooked up to machines and gently wheezes away, but all he sees is one of the most important girls he left behind.

"Hey kid," he says, his voice strained, before he can stop himself. She raises her head, puzzled, only then laying eyes on him. She stares, and he thinks he might fall apart. "I'm... I'm here."

"You're..." Flossie wheezes. It sounds painful, and he wishes there was something, anything he could do. He can feel Steve behind him, just hurting with him, and somehow it helps. "You're not real."

"I'm real, Floss." Bucky goes to her side, and takes her hand in his right hand, squeezes it, pushes his hair out of his face again. "See? It's me."

"You died, Bucky," she says, reproachfully. "I'm not crazy. I'm not dying."

"You're not," he promises, and a slew of curse words rush through his head at once as he fights off the urge to cry, mostly unsuccessfully. "I'm really here and I'm not gonna leave."

"He's here," Steve confirms, quietly. "He's like me, Flossie. He came back."

Her eyes widen, and if he hadn't already been half in tears this would have done him in. He treats her gently as he can, pulls her close with only his right arm, and kisses her forehead. Her lips press to his cheek and he knows, now, that he is not just a weapon, and he never was.

"You aren't getting rid of me any time soon," Bucky promises his sister, and her smile is brilliant.

* * *

New York is New York is New York. It hasn't changed, not really, not at root, and the whole thing's amazing. Bucky walks, a lot, goes to all the places he used to haunt, to the places Flossie's kids and grandkids recommend to him when the visiting hours overlap. He buys food from food trucks, he gently takes pictures for tourists on the street, and he can't take in enough of it. There aren't enough hours in the day.

Tony calls him when he's got a handful and a half of Mexican food, and he struggles to get the phone out of his jacket pocket and open the screen to answer it. (Perils of having a superpowered metal hand; you can't swipe your touchscreen phone open with it, and there's the definite possibility of crushing the hell out of your burrito.) "Not a great time," he greets him.

"Is it ever? Look, I'm bored," Tony wheedles back. "Are you really so busy? Is this a family visit thing?"

Bucky pauses. "No," he admits. "You're just so far uptown."

"It'd be easier if you'd just crash here."

"I'm crashing with Steve," he reminds Tony.

"You are," Tony agrees with a sigh.

Bucky hesitates again, hating to bring it up. "Besides, don't you have..."

Now it's really tense. Shit. "Don't I have what?" Tony asks after a moment, with the usual fake cheer masking his worry.

He wishes Steve had never told him, or even implied it. "A roommate," he says.

Tony doesn't say anything for a long moment, and Bucky stares down at his burrito. "Can you come over?" Tony asks finally, plaintive.

"I don't know about today," Bucky admits.

"Please," Tony says, with such genuine gentle caution that Bucky doesn't hesitate to answer him.

"Yeah. I'll see you soon."

The subway ride is really, really long, if only because he's stuck in his own head with all these thoughts, and he can't manage to scratch an itch on his left shoulder through all the fabric keeping his arm covered. He looks up at the Avengers Tower, and makes himself go inside before he can think twice about it.

Proving that he's Bucky Barnes isn't all that difficult, and Tony gets him waved up the elevator easily enough. When the doors open, Tony's lounging with a drink in front of all his see-through screens, and looks up, somehow surprised to see him there. "Hey."

Oh, God. This is so weird. "Hey," he answers.

"I'd ask if you want a drink but let's not get into that," Tony says, comfortably filling the silence; the screens disappear into thin air and he stands, going to sit on a couch nearby. "Come on. Make yourself at home."

He takes a breath and releases it as he goes to sit by Tony. "So," he starts, distinctly uncomfortable. "Just us?"

"She doesn't live here. Technically. It's complicated." Tony's doing the thing where he's talking to get words out before he can second-guess himself, Bucky thinks, because he just keeps going. "You know I hate this part? The talking part. I'm not a total asshole, I am capable of working shit out and think about other people in this kind of thing, obviously, otherwise - anyway, the point is, I hate it, a lot."

"I'm getting that impression," Bucky says, mostly just to prompt him to keep talking, because he's clearly not done.

"It's why I don't really do it. It's why it's so weird that this is happening. I don't even know you. Comparatively, that's really fucking weird for me," he keeps on. "Because usually it takes me twelve years or something to even consider any - emotional - thing - " Wow, he can't even get the words out easily. Bucky bites back amusement. "And I can't believe I just admitted that," he finishes, astonished and a little horrified.

"Stark," Bucky says patiently, "heart of gold. I already knew that."

Tony presses his face into his hands. "I'm bad at this. This is the only thing I'm bad at."

"That's not even slightly true," he answers without missing a beat.

That gets a smile from Tony. "Fair enough," he allows, and manages to breathe. Somehow Bucky's the relaxed one here, when he was all nerves coming up the elevator; how did that happen? "Barnes. Bucky. Jesus, it's so weird. This is so weird."

"You've said," Bucky reminds him.

"No. I mean. My dad told me about you and Cap. All this shit." Tony sits back, at least trying to relax, or pretending to. "All the stories he could think of. I don't know if he was bragging or just loved Steve and Carter to death or something - he didn't seem to know you all that well. Did you..."

"No," he admits. "Didn't know him either. Not well."

"Like I've said, he had his asshole moments. Still. It's surreal. I have cards of you guys somewhere, my dad gave them to me when I was a kid. And you're _here_. Alive. And somehow this - " Tony gestures between them - "is happening."

"Did they bring back the Hays Code? Because I figured in the future things like this would be less vague," Bucky says dryly.

Tony pulls in a breath. "I can't believe I've kissed you, and I like you, and also desperately want to fuck you even though you could break me in half with that arm," he says. "And I know there are things complicating this. Like, uh. My 'roommate.' And maybe yours, too, I don't know. And I don't even know if there's a point in making a big deal out of it, because there's a big chance you're going to decide that I'm too big a pain in the ass after a while, so all the - talking - what's the point, we might as well just..."

"Screw behind your girlfriend's back," he finishes slowly, watching Tony intently.

"I wasn't saying that," Tony says instantly. "I wouldn't, it's not like that, anyway. Things are way more complicated than they were back in your time."

"I doubt that," Bucky says dryly.

"What I mean is Pepper and I - she and I, we have a thing." He raises his eyebrows at Tony, who presses on. "A thing where it's not always... me and her? Because things happen. People happen. No point fighting it if everyone's cool."

Bucky pauses. "She lets you..."

"And I let her," he says. "Albeit it doesn't happen often. She sort of runs my company while I do all the inventing, so."

That's going to take a while to sink in. "Make me a drink," he says to Tony, finally. "Just one."

"Gotcha," Tony says, clears his throat, and gets up. Bucky follows him, and looks at the bar when Tony opens it. "What'll you have?" he asks Bucky.

"Whiskey and water. Short." Tony makes the drink, and he leans against the kitchen counter as he waits. When Tony finishes, brings it to him, he swirls the glass and looks up at him, casually as he dares. "Don't know much about 2012," he says. "Is that gonna work?"

"It could," Tony says, eventually, and makes a face. "But it could be awkward."

Bucky smiles wryly. "Is it somehow more awkward than kissing the guy who you tried to kill accidentally, because otherwise I'm not feeling all that bad for you," he tells him.

"You were eyeing me up like a piece of meat the entire time you were awake," Tony says, in that perfect matter-of-fact deadpan that Bucky can't ignore. "It wasn't a surprise."

"I didn't want it to be," Bucky says, without missing a beat, and God, he's tempting. But they have to work this out, and he has to figure out how to explain his own side. "So, are you going to talk to her?"

Tony is a little speechless for a moment, looking back at him with dumb astonishment, then says, "God, yes," before going for his phone. "We still on for the gym?" he asks, offhand.

"Oh, yeah," Bucky says, probably too pleased with himself, but Tony's the best kind of nervous wreck only feet away and it's hard not to enjoy it.

As it turns out, the gym has to wait, because apparently Tony's girlfriend wants to meet him, and they take one of Tony's cars to her apartment building, where she's apparently working on... something? Who knows. This could just be weirder than breaking through Russian brainwashing with mad science in a base where international spies are fighting Shakespearean aliens. Bucky hasn't decided yet.

"It'll be fine," Tony says, after a minute of silence in the car.

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?" Bucky asks rhetorically.

"She's great. She's fantastic," he says, defensive. "She's not that kind of woman."

"I - I wouldn't know," Bucky admits. "If women were doing this in my day they weren't telling me."

"They probably would have," Tony says easily. "You're hot as hell. Even with the hair band look."

"You know I don't know what that means yet," Bucky points out.

"It's okay," Tony reassures him, only a little dryly, and touches his hair. "I like the hair. The hair can stay."

"I haven't decided if it's going to. It's conspicuous. On the other hand, people are less likely to recognize me. I think I'm overthinking this, though." He looks at Tony, whose half-smile despite his obvious nerves is genuinely sort of sweet. "You really think I'm going to get sick of you?" he asks, while the curiosity outweighs his hesitation to ask the question.

"I'm an obnoxious, work-obsessed, vain pain in the ass. Yes, I think you will," Tony answers without missing a beat, and manages to avoidantly hold his gaze somehow.

"And I'm flawless, obviously," Bucky fires back in a good-natured deadpan. " _Tony_."

"Oh look, we're here," Tony says, obviously happy for the distraction and cheerful as a kid arriving at the candy store. He opens the car door before they even come to a full stop. "Hey, Roger," he says to the doorman, all upbeat, and hands him a tip. Bucky quickly follows before Tony outpaces him.

"You need to relax," Bucky says to him, as Tony hits the elevator button and crams his hands into his pockets.

"I'm completely relaxed," Tony assures him.

"If you think I buy that you're even more full of shit than you think you are."

There's a pause, then Tony actually laughs, and his smile, again, is fantastic. "You asshole."

Bucky grins. "From you I'll take that as a compliment. You sure you don't want to head up there first?"

"Yeah. I'll talk to her first. Uh, you can... take a phone call or something, maybe? Talk to her assistant? I keep forgetting if she has an assistant here," Tony admits.

"Can't leave me alone, right? I promise, I'm not going to take any silverware," he says. "God knows I have a hard enough time going through the metal detector."

He laughs before he can help it. "Jesus Christ. We're getting to you, aren't we? All the Avengers sarcasm."

"Steve and I had sarcasm down pat before your parents were even thinking about having kids," Bucky says blithely. "Still, it can't be helping."

The elevator pings, and they head up. Bucky takes a deep breath, and touches Tony's shoulder; Tony looks his way, with more than a little worry in his eyes. "Look," he says, "if this gets completely fucked up on us, just know, I'm sorry."

"I'll live," Bucky promises him. "Are you going to panic for the next ten floors?"

"Increasingly, probably," Tony says. "I'm serious."

He sighs, and puts his hands on Tony's shoulders. "I will kiss you, right now, on camera, and then the press will inevitably get their hands on it, and what then," he asks rhetorically.

"...I have no idea," Tony admits, looking up at him, "but I'm seriously considering letting you do it."

"Focus," Bucky tells him. Tony sighs heavily, and after a few minutes the elevator pings again, coming to a stop. The door opens, and... it's a residential floor, which is a surprise. "Why would she have an assistant at her house?" he asks Tony.

Tony shrugs. "What, you've never heard of a PA? I keep offering to make an AI for her but she doesn't seem to be interested."

"Do you guys speak entirely in acronyms now?"

"Well the Navajo wind-talker thing didn't stick."

It's not a long enough walk. They're in front of her door. Fuck, fuck, now Bucky's nervous too. He reaches to Tony and gently closes his gloved left hand around his right. Tony nods to him, exhales, and calms, at least trying to drop the façade some, for now. Then he knocks on Pepper's door.

"You have the key," a woman's voice calls out.

Tony pauses. "Do I?" he asks.

"I _gave_ you a key," she says mildly.

"Let me look." He starts looking through his keys, and glances to Bucky. "This might be a minute."

"Where am I going to go?" There go his nerves again. "You sure about this?"

Tony looks up at him in plain disbelief, then tries one key, then another, in the door, until one works. He strides inside, and gestures for Bucky to follow. "Honey, I'm home, et cetera," he calls inside, "or is Don Draper more appropriate?"

"You're too neurotic for Don Draper!"

Bucky makes himself go inside. It's a nice apartment, unpretentious, and he doesn't know much about Pepper but this apartment, that deadpan, and the reins she has on Tony are all good signs. Probably.

"No need to clear a path through the paperwork, Super-CEO, I'm coming to you," Tony promises her, sends Bucky a quick, warm glance, and goes down a short hallway.

Bucky decides he's going to sit down and try to figure out texting again. He's not terrible at it, but he's not great at it, either, because touchscreens again. (At least he's figured out how to not shatter the iPhone with his left while texting with his right. On the subway. Jesus, that was embarrassing.) _I am meeting Tonys girlfriend_ , he sends to Steve.

 _You are not_ , Steve sends back. _Really?_

 _We were talking. He told her, and she wanted to meet me._ Ugh, he has to keep backspacing, and he's forgotten how to turn off autocorrect.

 _Well, I'll buy dinner and you can tell me everything._

Bucky sighs. _You're not taking this seriously_ , he sends back.

 _I can't help it that you're in the most bizarre soap opera ever, Buck_

 _Could be worse_ , he sends back. _I could be stuck trying to figure out if Romanov is flirting with me like some people I know._

 _Ha ha ha_ , Steve sends back, and Bucky smirks to himself, but is startled back to himself when he can hear Tony and Pepper being sarcastic at each other much more clearly. He stands immediately, and sees her, and she's... a damn good-looking woman with an amazing smile, but the best part, admittedly, is just how at home Tony is right now beside her.

He's grinning. Yeah. Okay. He can do this.

"Pepper Potts," she says, and they shake hands. "I've read all about you. Do you know there's an authorized biography that says - "

Woah, wait. "Authorized?" That's funny as hell. He's going to enjoy talking to his grand-whatevers about this. "Who the hell authorized it? What's it say?"

"That you have great taste in men," Pepper says dryly. "Not sure what happened here, though." She indicates Tony.

"An astounding lapse in judgment, even from an amnesiac," Bucky explains to her, and looks to Tony, who is just boggling. "I like her," he adds.

This dawns on Tony, visibly, and it's hilarious. "Great," he says, then, slowly. Bucky tries not to laugh at Pepper's own stifled laugh. "You like each other."

"Deal with it," Bucky says smoothly. "Sorry, I need to know. Are we interrupting anything important?" he asks Pepper.

"God no, it's Saturday. I'm just clearing my desk. He doesn't know a real inbox pile when he sees one because he doesn't have an inbox," Pepper explains.

"Not a physical one, at least," Tony adds helpfully.

"I'm going to make some coffee. Everyone want coffee?" Pepper asks, looking between Tony and Bucky.

"I'd offer to hit up the Keurig but I'm terrified of what's going to happen when I leave you two alone," Tony admits.

"I'll show her my arm and steal her," Bucky says in a plain deadpan. "It's fine. Coffee would be great."

"Go do the Keurig then," Pepper says, sending Tony an expectant but teasing look. "You know how I like it."

"Oh, do I," Tony says dryly, casually grabs her ass, and goes to the kitchen before she can smack his arm.

"That man," Pepper says, in simple, satisfied exasperation.

"I have enough going on," Bucky says, by way of agreement. "I have no idea why I'm putting myself through this."

She sighs. "He's charismatic. He's sweet. And if he cares about you it's hard not to care right back."

"Are you talking about me?" Tony calls to them. "Why can't I hear you from here? This is not a good floor plan!"

"Oh, God," Bucky sighs, and presses his right hand to his face.

"You have to show me your arm," Pepper informs him. First, he thinks she's mock-serious, but she's serious-serious, and he starts laughing, embarrassed as hell, first pulling off the jacket and then his glove. "Wow. This is... a metal arm," she concludes, touching it, and he's uncomfortable actually with how much he doesn't mind how close she is to him. "Does it - oh, my god." She takes his hand and examines it as he curls his fingers. "That's amazing."

Tony stops dead with the two cups of coffee, and raises his eyebrows at Bucky, who just puts on an innocent smile. "Did you make this?" Pepper asks Tony, happily ignoring the look on his face.

"I helped make it work after it was under ice for a few decades," Tony concedes.

"That's a no," Bucky says dryly to Pepper.

"By the way, I was joking about the arm thing," Tony chides him.

"And I wouldn't worry about it. Pepper Potts doesn't seem like the kind of girl you can steal," Bucky teases back, and scratches his shoulder. "Besides. That's not how this works, apparently."

Pepper shoots a look at Tony as she goes to sit down on the couch, and delicately picks up her coffee mug. "It's a relationship involving Tony Stark," she says, not without fondness. "Time will tell how the hell it'll work, or if it even will."

For some reason, Tony's smiling. Bucky gets his coffee and kicks back.

Denying the insanity around him and in him doesn't seem to have done him any good thus far. Right now it's too tempting to just accept that these people are offering him this crazy solution, and it helps that he loves almost every part of it.

It's 2012. He left his life behind in 1941, only fragments of it are left, so, what does he have to lose?

* * *

They hold out for two weeks. More accurately, Tony holds out for two weeks.

It's all too natural, is the thing, despite their reservations. When they just stop thinking about every last implication, every last thing that could go wrong, when they're just together, they manage. They're fine. Better than fine.

What's amazing to Bucky about the first night they spend together is how Tony doesn't seem to know how to handle it at all. They don't drink, they don't party like assholes, there was no battle or danger or horrible adrenaline-pushing trauma before. He wants it, they want it, and that's why it's happening tonight, without all that bullshit to blame later.

It's quiet now that they've settled in. Pepper strokes Tony's hair, fondly, the soft folds of her dress falling across his leg as they lounge in his bed. His eyes are half-closed, languid, and he looks at Bucky with a careful question in his face. Bucky answers it with a kiss, brief but reassuring, and he runs his fingers across the arc reactor in Tony's chest. Pepper presses a kiss to his jaw, and whispers something into his ear so low Bucky can't even hear. Tony stirs, then, just slightly, looking up at him.

"You, uh," he says, faltering. Holy hell, they've reduced Tony Stark to stammering and the ménage a trois hasn't even really started yet. "If you want to - "

"No ifs," Pepper reminds him, gently. "We talked about this. It's okay."

"I want to," Bucky says, firm but patient. "Go on."

"She wants to see us." Tony pauses. "Try not to kill me with the arm."

Bucky pauses, too. "I told you, we could have had it taken off - "

Tony shakes his head. "No. Just. I adjusted some levels but it still weighs a hell of a lot."

The conversation catches up to him, though, and Bucky looks to Pepper. _You want to..._ "Yeah," she confirms the question written all over his face. "That a problem?"

Bucky swiftly shakes his head, and meets Tony halfway for a kiss, and, Jesus. He's never had anyone _watching_ before - well, he's never known anyone was watching, anyway - and it's weird in a self-conscious kind of way but also in a really sexy way that makes him want to kind of put on a show. This is the most intense they've let the kissing get, the furthest they've let their hands go, and Pepper isn't making a sound or saying a word but he can still feel her there, her touch gently on Tony's side.

He watches his left arm - and Tony was telling the truth, something's definitely been adjusted, and all for the best, really - but otherwise doesn't hold back, and there's a moment where Tony gives in completely, too, marked pretty pointedly by his attempt to peel Bucky's shirt off. He makes a sound against Tony's mouth and breaks the kiss to pull off the shirt, moving his face away from Tony's next kiss. "Hey Pepper," he murmurs. "What we take off, you take off. Only fair."

Tony pulls off his shirt, then, drawing a breath in quickly when Bucky runs a hand down his chest, and does his best to disguise it by raising his eyebrows at Pepper. "Yeah, Pepper. Only fair."

"I'm wearing a dress," she reminds them, matter-of-fact.

Tony leans in to kiss her, and, to Bucky's surprise, she allows it, and they share a long and lingering kiss that leaves her with what looks like a smile of concession. "Lose the dress," he says to Pepper and her smile, "and we lose the pants."

"I don't remember having a vote here," Bucky interrupts wryly.

Pepper shifts to gather the hem of her dress, then turns around to move her hair away from the zipper. "Gentlemen?"

Fuck. This is happening. Bucky moves forward, when Tony is still in what has to be permission. "No problem," he says breezily, and unzips her dress. She touches his left hand, and he can't feel it, but he can see the way her eyes close, and the vague lift of the corner of her mouth; he kisses her neck, once and again, half in gratitude.

"Thanks," Pepper says, breathing out slowly, shakily, and stands, letting the dress pool on the floor.

"She's amazing," Tony says, as she turns around, almost modest, and Bucky takes her in with complete admiration. "Isn't she?"

"Says the guy who's dated supermodels," she says.

"Shut up," he answers instantly, and the space between them, between all three of them, is so charged with sex and emotion and everything that it's... completely unlike anything Bucky's ever felt before. He knows he should maybe feel like he shouldn't be here, with these two people who love each other so much, but... somehow this is okay. It's better than okay.

"A deal's a deal," Bucky says, breaking the moment's pause, and undoes his jeans carefully as he can.

"Christ," Tony swears, and Pepper is giggling against his shoulder when Bucky looks up, a little paranoid.

"What?" he checks.

"I have no idea how he didn't jump you before this," Pepper confesses.

Bucky looks down at himself, then up at them, pulling off his jeans. "You need to lose the shoes and socks," he tells Tony.

"I wasn't going to bring my toes into this before I had to," Tony says, defensively. "That's not my thing."

"Yeah, well, untying your shoes isn't sexy right before the whole thing, either, and who wears socks during sex?" he returns.

Pepper is still laughing. "Are you _really_ \- "

"Are you telling me this doesn't bother you?"

"Well I wasn't going to point it out, but now that you mention it," she agrees.

Tony makes a face, and takes off his shoes, socks, and pants, and once he's standing there, just a gorgeous man with an arc reactor and a pair of boxers, Bucky kisses him again and again, soundly, until Pepper's hand works between them and Tony groans into his mouth as she strokes him.

"I like your style, Potts," Bucky murmurs, and he presses against Tony, who could not be more obviously taken aback by the dual-front sex attack he's getting (which is a little disingenuous for a guy who definitely wanted a threesome).

Pepper moves away from Tony's ear (her target for matter-of-fact sultry whispering he still can't make out, with the occasional nip or kiss at his neck), and puts a hand to Bucky's face to pull him into a kiss. She's fierce, which he shouldn't be surprised to note, but is for some reason. She bites his lip before releasing him. "Yours too," she says.

What the hell. This is completely amazing, and Bucky commits to it wholeheartedly. He kisses Tony again, just as harshly as Pepper kissed him, and he arches up against him, her touch, the heat of Bucky's cock - they're both starting to get hard. "Jesus," Tony breathes after a break. "Jesus, I know neither of you have done this, so - "

Bucky clutches Tony closer by the small of the back with his left hand, and the metal must be warming but still cool based on the way his back goes stiff, but he shudders and kisses Bucky, hard, and Pepper exchanges a look with Bucky before taking her hand off Tony's cock.

He presses his cock against Tony's, then, and they shift to find the sweet spot where their cocks can meet and brush through the boxers (which really need to go, honestly). This leads to the first time all night that Bucky loses his composure completely; Tony pushes him onto his back, splays his leg just slightly, and pushes his hips against Bucky's. His left hand grips Tony closer, instinctively, and Tony laughs in terror, arousal, or some mix of the two, but breaks the kiss and tries to breathe.

Bucky is trying to remember what it's like to be able to think, when Tony asks breathlessly, "Did that work for you, Miss Potts?"

He looks to her, too. Pepper's expression is completely unreadable, but in probably the best possible way. "Yeah," she says; she clears her throat and licks her lips, and Bucky knows he's ruined, now, at least for tonight, because all he wants to do is kiss both of their stupid mouths until their lips are bruised. "Bucky," she says, half-pleading, and he meets her gaze.

"This is the complicated part," Tony says softly. "Choreography."

"Scheduling," Pepper answers. "Logistics." She's searching Bucky's face for something, and he doesn't know what to say, but he's still trying to think. His brain's just not cooperating. "I just need someone to fuck me."

"Already?" Tony asks. "Don't we usually have a few opening acts before the headliner? Not that I mind."

"I've been thinking about this all day," she says. "Both of you. I am so ready."

Jesus, Bucky's never heard a woman say that, and he feels himself go even stiffer under Tony, who eyes him. "If you like dirty talk," he tells Bucky, "you're gonna love Pepper. And that's not even the half of it."

"You two should," Bucky says, finally finding his voice.

"Not the point. She wants to see your cock," Tony says swiftly. "I'll bet anything."

"Tony," Pepper says severely.

"Oh, careful, you just gave him another inch." Tony grins at Bucky as he climbs off the bed, and pulls off his own boxers. Bucky looks at Tony for a long moment - hell, he's fantastic - but then he gestures mock-impatiently for Bucky to get up, and he does, pulling down his boxers, and intently feels both Pepper and Tony looking at him.

"You seem kind of overdressed," Bucky says, finally, to Pepper, who smiles broadly. Tony snickers, and presses a kiss to Bucky's jaw as she sheds her bra and underwear. "What are we..." What's he supposed to do? Shit . Thinking is hard. Difficult.

"You're going to fuck Pepper," Tony says, and she nods, looking back at them, and Bucky cannot look away right now because her breasts are amazing. "After that we'll play it by ear. She's good at planning, and she can be really persuasive when the juices are flowing."

"Jesus, Tony," Pepper chides him, but doesn't look too offended. She offers a hand to Bucky, meeting him halfway on the bed, and draws him into a few tender kisses first, but both are less than completely patient. Tony lies beside them, giving casual suggestions of gestures and touches that make her make indignant gasps and keening sounds, and just as he's about to beg for permission, she's insisting, guiding his cock to her, and they fuck more harshly than the blood rushing through Bucky's ears and the intense joy inside him could ever imply. Tony is there, hard as a rock next to them, saying some of the filthiest shit Bucky's ever heard, nonetheless imagined, and when Bucky is right on the edge, he whispers " _Do it_ " hot against his ear, and he shoves himself inside of Pepper as deep and hard as he can, capturing her mouth in a kiss and a half, before he comes inside of her, shuddering against her and Tony.

"Wow. _Yes_. Oh my god," she sighs, and rests her head back against the bed. " _Oh God_."

Bucky slips out of her, moves sweat-soaked strands of hair from his face with a brush of his fingers, and rests his head against the headboard, while Pepper and Tony share a short but sweet kiss, and Tony brings Bucky's face to his own to kiss him. "I know what we're doing next," he says after breaking from it, a glint in his eye. "So, you played baseball. Pitcher, or catcher?"

There's a pause, then Pepper hits Tony in the shoulder and starts laughing like a loon. "Oh my god," she says, "you are _such_ an asshole."

Tony smirks at Bucky. "Well?"

Bucky considers the question, and steals a kiss from Tony's already wonderfully battered mouth. "Seems obvious to me," he says, "if you know what you're doing."

"Consider the gauntlet thrown, Tony," Pepper says, grinning devilishly.

Tony laughs, incredulous but plainly delighted, then pauses. "Christ, now that I think about it I'm not sure we have any lube," he says.

"Go look," Bucky says, and gives him the look that used to get him three dates a week. Tony folds like a card table, starting to rifle through drawers.

"How do you do that?" Pepper whispers.

"I'll teach you if I can manage it," Bucky whispers back, and kisses her again, lingering, and they exchange a grin.

He has the feeling none of this will make sense tomorrow. He can't bring himself to care.

* * *

 _Mid-2013_

Flossie passes. He stays with her until the end, he gives her eulogy; she dies with a smile on her face and he'll miss her but he couldn't have asked for more from this.

Things are all right.

Inside his head... it's not like he's well, and it's not like everything's okay. Things don't suddenly work out like that. Bucky spends at least two days a week with Fitz or Cora or both or their "colleagues" who he naturally distrusts at first (who can blame him?), but eventually realizes he doesn't have much of a choice in it. When he avoids his treatment, when he doesn't show up or participate in the way they need him to - so much of it is "think of that, listen to this" some days - nothing happens, or things get worse. It's a joint effort, and it becomes harder and harder to deny that there are at least a handful of people in the world who want to help him, and who want more for him than a gun in his hand and a mission.

"I was lying before," he says to Cora, suddenly, as they're doing up the straps again. She pauses, a little alarmed, and he shakes his head to dismiss that implication before acquiescing to Fitz's attempt to put the visor on him. "Something's wrong. With Tony."

"Like what, dear?" she asks, and touches his right hand, taking his fingers softly into her palm. He exhales; it's a maternal touch, and these days he needs something simple and unconditional like that.

"He's not sleeping. I don't know for sure. Pepper doesn't think he is either, though. But he doesn't want to talk about it. Or anything. He's hiding again."

"Aren't we all, at some point or another?" Cora asks rhetorically, and smiles wryly at the face he makes. "Bucky. Just remember. Help can only be offered and taken, and unless both occur only some good may come of it."

Bucky lets his head drop to the back of the chair with a huff. "You're saying all I can do is wait for him to try to breathe?"

Cora considers that, and answers with her own questions. "Do you really think _Tony Stark's_ going to let himself be pressured into answering personal questions? Even by - especially by - people he cares about?"

"Fine," he relents.

Fitz looks over the back of the chair at him. "Oh! We can do this without the psychotropics. Do you want them anyway?"

Bucky looks up at Cora, who says, "I know what he's implying but you should take them anyway."

He shrugs, and Fitz beams, excitably gesturing to Cora to get the syringe. He exhales, waits for Cora to inject him, and sends her a smile before he closes his eyes.

The next time he and Natasha spend her off-day being antisocial, he waits until she asks how everything is - which she never does unless she really wants to hear it - and her opinion seems to be the polar opposite of Cora's.

"Don't wait. Do something." Bucky eyes her, and she shrugs. "Just don't have sex with him," she says. "I know the type. He'll tell you eventually."

"I think that's the only thing keeping him sane right now," Bucky says, a little alarmed.

"Right. Without it he'll confess to whatever's going on," Natasha says mildly.

"Getting him drunk didn't help." Bucky drops his face into his hand. "Fuck."

"Does it help, knowing that this is your biggest problem right now?" she asks him wryly.

He sighs. "For now," he says. "You know it can't stay this quiet this long."

Natasha concedes that, and looks away. "Try to catch him in the problem, then. Whatever he's doing at night. Get JARVIS in on it."

"I have no idea how to manage that," Bucky says, lies down on his back on her bed, and makes a face.

She strokes his hair. "Ask Pepper. She's been teaming up with that thing for years. When are you cutting this all off?" she asks, seamlessly changing topics.

He raises his eyebrows at her. "I don't know."

"It's just. You look like Katniss Everdeen."

"Shut up," he says, and cracks a smile despite himself, and she smirks.

His phone goes off. "Careful, I hear those things aren't covered for metal arm damage," she says blithely, and he rolls his eyes at her before he grabs it to look at the text.

 _Don't like the look of this guy,_ Happy's texting him, along with an off-angle, blurry picture of a guy who is blond and could really be very, very good-looking. Bucky considers this, and hands the phone to Natasha. "What do you think?"

"That's Aldritch Killian," she says, and squints. "I think. Who doesn't know how to operate a cameraphone by now? Oh. It's Happy."

"Do we have something to worry about?" he asks Natasha, then, persisting.

She pauses, and offers him his phone. He takes it back and immediately starts to text Pepper and Tony.

 _Dinner tonight, I think._

He meets Natasha's amused (and a little concerned) gaze. "So. About Killian," he says. "Tell me what you know."

Natasha smoothes his hair. "Are you planning on starting something, Sergeant Barnes?" she asks, in her subtle, cautious but amused tone.

Bucky curls his left hand's fingers, and tenses the hand into a fist.

"Only if I have to."


End file.
